GOING WEST FESTIVAL
SATURDAY MORNING


A dull, showery day has not kept the punters away from the ever-popular annual Going West Festival held in the pretty hilltop village of Titirangi half an hour from central Auckland.


THE GODWITS FLY


The first session and a high standard was set by the two birdlovers on the platform.
Keith Woodley, manager of the Miranda Shorebird Centre and author of GODWITS:LONG HAUL CHAMPIONS (Penguin), was in discussion with sometime journalist,columnist/author (H0w to Watch a Bird) Steve Braunias and what a marvellously informative, interesting and often humurous time it proved to be. Woodley proved to be a droll and entertaining speaker, an ornothologist with an encyclopeadic knwledge of wading birds and in particular the bar-tailed godwit, the bird famous for its 11,000+ km annual migration from New Zealand to Alaska and other far northern parts.


FROM ZEUSS TO SEUSS:ORIGINS OF STORIES


Brian Boyd is an academic star, a distinguished professor in the English department at the University of Auckland, and of course, the world's leading Vladimir Nabokov scholar. He has a number of books to his credit, his latest ON THE ORIGIN OF STORIES Evolution, Cognition, and Fiction (Harvard) being published to coincide with Darwin's bicentennial.

He was in discussion with librarian/author/book reviewer Iain Sharp.

Boyd was in dazzling form and came across as warm and super knowledgeable on his subject. I thought to myself what a joy it would be to be in one of his university classes.
Suddenly the session was over...



After a coffee break we were wonderfully entertained in a 15 minute interlude by veteran poet Kevin Ireland reading from his latest collection of verse, Table Talk (Cape Catley).









READING BEGINS AT HOME



Bookseller/author Dorothy Butler, a doyen of the NZ children's book world, was in conversation with award-winning author Kate de Goldi about the recently published second volume of her autobiography, ALL THIS AND A BOOKSHOP TOO (Penguin). She also read two excerpts from the book which were both warmly received by the large audience.


So three excellent sessions, all most ably chaired, along with entertainment from Kevin Ireland, and then it was time for lunch.

More later.