One
of the world’s most respected health science writers, Dr Atul Gawande,
is coming to New Zealand as a guest of the 2015 Auckland Writers Festival.
Festival director Anne O’Brien says Dr Gawande is a must-see
for anyone with an interest in health, medicine and mortality.
“Atul Gawande is a brilliant mind; a world-leader in how to
make our experiences in health care safer and healthier, what it’s like to get
old and where our ideas about death have gone wrong.”
Dr Gawande will appear in two major public events at the
Festival: in conversation with Dr David Galler, an intensive care specialist at
Middlemore Hospital, on Saturday 16 May, 5.30pm, and in a panel conversation on
the future on Sunday 17 May, 3pm, both in The Aotea Centre’s ASB Theatre.
Tickets for these events, priced from just $15, go on public sale 9am, 19 March
from www.ticketmaster.co.nz.
Dr Gawande gave last year’s prestigious Reith Lectures for
the BBC. His bestselling books include The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get
Things Right, Better and, most recently, Being Mortal: Illness,
Medicine, and What Matters in the End.
While in New Zealand, Dr Gawande will also headline a
day-long forum for the health and disability and aged-care sectors in
Wellington on Monday 18 May.
The forum is being presented by the Health Quality &
Safety Commission, whose chair, Professor Alan Merry, says: “Dr Gawande
encourages the kind of fresh thinking the Commission supports here in New
Zealand, so we are delighted to be able to host this event.”
To book a place at the forum, visit www.hqsc.govt.nz/atul-gawande
or email info@hqsc.govt.nz.
Dr Gawande travels from the US, where he is a surgeon at
Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and professor in both the Department of
Health Policy and Management at the Harvard School of Public Health and the
Department of Surgery at Harvard Medical School.
Last year more than 50,000 people flocked to the Auckland
Writers Festival - a 45 percent increase in ticket sales compared with 2013 -
and many events sold out.
Now in its 15th year, the Auckland Writers
Festival plays host to more than 150 writers over five days of ideas, readings,
debates, stand-up poetry, literary theatre, children’s writers and free family
events.
The 2015 Auckland Writers Festival programme is launched at
an invitation-only event at the Auckland Art Gallery on the evening of Tuesday
17 March. A preferential booking period for Festival Patrons and Friends
follows with public tickets on sale from 9.00am, Thursday 19 March, from www.ticketmaster.co.nz.
The Auckland Writers Festival
warmly thanks its Gold Partners: The University of Auckland, Freemasons
Foundation, New Zealand Listener, ASB Community Trust, Creative New
Zealand and ATEED; Summerset Group who are supporting Dr Gawande’s conversation
event at the Festival; and all our other Silver, Bronze and Supporting
Partners.
We are also enormously
grateful to our Festival patrons for their enthusiasm and generosity.
ENDS
KEY DATES
12
May
Damian Barr’s Literary Salon (Seafarers Club, Britomart)
13
May
Auckland Writers Festival Schools Programme (Aotea Centre)
The University of Auckland Festival Debate (Aotea Centre)
14
May
Auckland Writers Festival Schools Programme (Aotea Centre)
New Zealand Listener Gala Night (Aotea Centre)
15-17
May Public
Festival programme (Aotea Centre, Auckland Art Gallery)
16
May
Dr Atul Gawande in conversation with Dr David Galler (ASB Theatre, Aotea
Centre, 5.30pm)
17
May
FREE Family Day Programme (Herald Theatre)
Dr Atul Gawande in a panel discussion (ASB Theatre, Aotea Centre,
3.00pm)
18 May
Dr Atul Gawande forum for health and disability and
aged-care sectors presented by the Health Quality & Safety
Commission (Visa Platinum Gallery, Te Papa, Wellington, 9.30am–4.30pm,
$280, booking essential)
For further Auckland
Writers Festival information, interview opportunities, author and book images,
please contact: Penny Hartill, director, hPR, 09 445 7525, 021 721 424, penny@hartillpr.co.nz
For further
information on Dr Gawande’s Wellington forum with the Health Quality &
Safety Commission, contact Guy Somerset, 04 913 1745, 021 813 591, guy.somerset@hqsc.govt.nz
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