Escape! Festival in Tauranga at Queen’s Birthday weekend features Fiona Kidman, Craig Potton, Tim Wilson & many more

Escape the winter blues, the short days and long nights for two action-packed days in Tauranga at Queen’s Birthday weekend.

The new Escape! Festival has a focus on words, whether written, spoken or performed, with a first-class line-up, including award-winning authors and performers.

Travel writer Peter Riordan will talk about the Middle East and the Indian sub-continent, chef Jo Crabb has a second home in a French village and a life of food experiences, photographer Craig Potton will take us to his favourite remote places both here and in Nepal and India, and beer writer Michael Donaldson will outline the social history of the “amber nectar” and modern craft brews.

Dame Fiona Kidman reflects on a lifetime of writing and her strong-willed female characters, Tim Wilson discusses his new comic novel “News Pigs”, and military historian Damien Fenton takes us into the mire, miseries and small miracles of World War 1.

The state of our waterways – the bad and the good – is the focus for a discussion between Federated Farmers chairman Bruce Wills, economist Rod Oram, cultural advisor Antoine Coffin and conservationist Craig Potton. Chaired by Professor Jacqueline Rowarth of Waikato University, this event promises to be one of the highlights of Escape!

As well as two workshops – writing from memory with Fiona Kidman and a cook school with Jo Crabb – Escape! includes two performances.

“The Bookbinder”, which won the Best of the Fringe Festival award in Wellington this year, will be performed in a bookstore to only 20 people at a time, weaving shadowplay, paper art and puppetry into theatre for curious children and adventurous adults.

Film-maker and novelist Duncan Sarkies and musician Sean O’Brien have created a stage version of Duncan’s latest book, “The Demolition of the Century”, a humorous and sometimes heartbreaking look at families, memories and the fragility of the human mind.

• Tickets are on sale at the Baycourt box office in Tauranga,  www.ticketek.co.nz  or phone 0800 842 538. Full details of the Escape! programme are available at www.taurangafestival.co.nz