The Auckland Writers & Readers Festival has pulled off as coup with the securing of former spy chief Dame Stella Rimington (UK),Booker Prize winner Roddy Doyle (Ireland) and beloved Young Adult writer Emily Rodda (Australia) will attend the May 2012 Auckland Writers & Readers Festival.Dame Stella Rimington DCB, left, who will headline the Festival’s highly popular Soul Bar Lunch event alongside main programme appearances, is the British author of a number of gripping ‘insider’ spy novels, most recently RipTide (2011). She is also well-known as the first female and the first publicised Director General of MI5, a position she held from 1992 to 1996.
Irish novelist and Booker Prize winner Roddy Doyle, right,whose 1987 novel The Commitments was made into the hit movie of the same name, is also a dramatist and screenwriter. He has a long list of popular writing credits and, in 2011, published the short story collection Bull Fighting, alongside his novel for younger readers, A Greyhound of a Girl.Among Emily Rodda’s many books for children, her Deltora Quest and Rowan of Rin series books are loved and devoured by YA readers. She comes to the Festival in May with the support of the Australia Council, following the publication of The Golden Door, the first novel in a new trilogy. Rodda, who also writes crime under her real name Jennifer Rowe, will be appearing in both the schools’ programme on 9-10 May and the main programme.
“It’s such a pleasure to reveal this taster of the rich line-up planned for May 2012,” says Artistic Director Anne O’Brien.
“Dame Stella Rimington, Roddy Doyle and Emily Rodda (left) will all bring fine craft, great minds and broad experiences to Auckland, not to mention providing the perfect Christmas reads, setting the tone for what will undeniably be another outstanding Auckland Writers & Readers Festival.” Footnote:
The Bookman is an enormous fan of all three of these authors. What wonderful news. And I am sure there will be lots more to come. Watch this space!
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