Imagine spending four hours picking the brains of some of
New Zealand’s best poets, authors, illustrators, journalists and playwrights to
inspire and develop your own writing skills.
This is what the New Zealand Book Council offers students
all over the country through their hugely successful Speed Date an Author programme.
For the last five years it has been one
of their most successful education programmes, touring six regions every year.
Each event features five writers, and up to 20 schools and 90 students.
On Thursday 17th September, Christchurch City Libraries will be hosting their third
Speed Date event at the South
Library and Learning Centre. Speed
Date an Author has a strong community focus, and is an opportunity for
local authors to shine as they share ideas and form links with the next
generation of readers and writers.
Christchurch is blessed with some of New Zealand’s finest
writers and illustrators. This year the event will showcase poet and playwright
Bernadette Hall, graphic artist Spencer Hall, screenwriter Kathleen Gallagher,
and poet Jeffrey Paparoa-Holman.
Christchurch students will also have the opportunity to
engage with special guest author Ella West, whose novel Night Vision won the Young Adult Fiction Children's Choice Award at
the 2015 New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults.
“It will be
great to meet these students and see what they come up with on the day,” Ella
said. “I hope they will be prepared to be challenged about how they think about
writing. We’re going to bombard them
with new concepts, new ways of doing things and hopefully they will leave full
of ideas.”
Between 9.00am and 1.00pm the authors will deliver
fast-paced sessions, 25 minutes long, to five rotating groups of students,
followed by a prize-giving. The sessions are intended to develop the skills of
the young writers, and to encourage them to find their unique voice.
No comments:
Post a Comment