The Press Christchurch Writers Festival gets underway in style

After being abandoned twice after the September 2010 and February 2011 earthquakes, The Press Christchurch Writers Festival is on again this weekend with a full programme featuring local, national and international guests. The venue for the biggest event of its kind in the South Island is being staged in the impressive Geo Dome in Hagley Park.

And yesterday the Festival launched in style with a series of events for school children during the day followed at 4.30pm with In So Many Words featuring four local techno-savvy communicators - librarians & bloggers Donna Roberston and Moata Tamaira, writer & art historian Lara Strongman and Will Harvie an editor and blogger with The Press - talking about the impact of tweeting, blogging, Facebooking and digital publishing on their working and personal lives.
The 80 strong audience had plenty of questions for the panellists after each had spoken.
This was however something of a curtain-raiser for the evening's main event, London Burning, when before a sell-out crowd two heavyweights of the UK literary scene - John Lanchester and Chris Cleave - were skilfully lead by Kate de Goldi in an interesting discussion on London - their experiences of living there,the impact of the economic recession, writing about the city in their novels, the impact of the Olympics and much more.
Afterwards the punters went off happily into the cool night after an entertaining session. A great start to the Festival.

http://chchwritersfest.co.nz/