TWO WOMEN WRITERS STAR PERFORMERS
Day two of the Festival, (opened last evening but The Bookman was unable to be there) kicked off in fine style with consummate performances from Perrin Rowland and Bee Dawson.
Her session was ably chaired by leading Auckland restaurant critic Peter Calder.
Rowland, in her mid-30's, hails from the US, is an academic who trained as a chef in Italy 10 years ago and who explained she had ended up living in NZ as a result of "love and geography". She proved to be as Calder suggested "a fascinating speaker on a fascinating subject" and in her wide ranging comments she talked about issues such as the myth that there was no eating out before the 1960's, liquor licencing laws and the significant changes of 1917 and 1961. elitism attached to fine dining, the grill room and the hotel dining room, the history of and the popularity of food writing.
This was an interesting and entertaining perfromace and I could have listened to the conversation between Calder and Rowland all day.\
Next up was another articulate and interesting writer, social historian Bee Dawson, whose latest book, A History of Gardening in New Zealand, which I have not seen but after hearing her in conversation with Christopher Johnstone,(The Painted Garden in New Zealand), I am now keen to read it.
Bee described herself as "an accidental wrtiter" who first started writing articles for the New Zealand Gardener and then graduated to books "after Bernice Beachman at Penguin Books phoned me one day with an idea about a book of early New Zealand women painters" which resulted in her first book, Lady Painters (Penguin 1999).
Skilfully led by art historian/author Christopher Johnstone, Bee told us of her research methods and the enormous value of the NationaL Library's immense collection of digitised historic New Zealand newspapers, Papers Past. Interestingly Perrin Rowland also referred to this in her session.
Dawson proved to be a entertaining and frank speaker with a wry sense of humour.
No comments:
Post a Comment