New Zealand writers making
waves at home and abroad will present their work and participate in the
prestigious Edinburgh International
Book Festival in August.
A new partnership between the
festival, WORD Christchurch and
Creative New Zealand has resulted in the talented line-up of New Zealand
writers, all with acclaimed books, set to make an impression at the renowned
literary event.
The writers are award-winning
and wildly popular Wellington poet Hera Lindsay Bird, critically acclaimed
Auckland poet, playwright and fiction writer Courtenay Sina Meredith, and
best-selling Wellington novelist, comic artist and blogger Sarah Laing. They
will be accompanied by Rachael King, author and programme director of WORD
Christchurch, who has worked with the festival to select the writers and curate
their events.
Participation in the festival
is part of the New Zealand at Edinburgh 2017 season which sees the return of a New Zealand season across
the various Edinburgh festivals taking place in August. This follows an
ambitious and successful presentation in 2014.
With the theme of Brave New Words,
this year’s book festival programme features more than 1000 authors from 45
countries.
Hera
Lindsay Bird will appear with recent Ted Hughes prize-winner Hollie McNish in Poetry
Superstars, and perform in a late night spoken word showcase. Courtney
Sina Meredith will join a 21st Century
Women panel, curated by guest selectors Roxane Gay and Jackie Kay. Meredith
will also appear alongside Scottish poet and musician MacGillivray in Reshuffling
the Pack. Sarah Laing will host a reading
workshop of Katherine Mansfield stories, as well as talk about her book Mansfield
& Me alongside English comic creator Hannah Berry in Graphic
Novels of Influential Women. Rachael King will also appear in the
children’s programme.
“We are thrilled that
the relationships developed during previous seasons have resulted in this new
partnership. It will expose the Edinburgh International Book Festival’s
audiences to new and talented voices from Aotearoa and provide a dynamic
international networking opportunity for the writers,” said Creative New
Zealand senior manager for international, Cath Cardiff.
The festival expressed an
interest in working with a local partner to bring New Zealand authors to its
programme. This worked well with WORD Christchurch’s aspirations to engage more
with international partners and to promote New Zealand literature overseas.
“We are delighted to be
working with WORD Christchurch this year and we are very much looking forward
to welcoming some of New Zealand’s wonderful writers to the book festival in
August,” said Director of the Edinburgh International Book
Festival, Nicky Barley.
“It has been a pleasure to
work with Edinburgh International Book Festival on programming New Zealand
writers into some fantastic events that will showcase their talents and ensure
maximum exposure for their work,” said Rachael King.
The Edinburgh International
Book Festival began in 1983 and is now a key event in the August festival
season. It has grown rapidly in size and scope to become the largest and most
dynamic festival of its kind in the world. In its first year the book festival
hosted 30 events, now it programmes more than 800 events attracting around
220,000 visitors.
To support the writers to
attend the festival Creative New Zealand has provided $20,000 towards airfares,
accommodation and administration costs.
Biographies:
Hera Lindsay Bird has an MA in poetry from the International Institute
of Modern Letters in Wellington where she won the 2011 Adam Prize for best
folio. Her debut, self-titled book of poetry HERA LINDSAY BIRD was
published in July 2016 by Victoria University Press (VUP). It has become the
fastest selling, most popular book of poetry the VUP has ever published, and
won Best First Book of Poetry at the 2017 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards.
Courtney Sina Meredith is a poet, playwright, fiction writer and musician.
Her play Rushing Dolls (2010) won a number of awards and was published
by Playmarket in 2012. She launched her first published book of poetry, Brown
Girls in Bright Red Lipstick (Beatnik), at the 2012 Frankfurt Book Fair,
and has since published a short story collection, Tail of the Taniwha
(2016) to critical acclaim. She has been selected for a number of international
writers' residencies. Meredith describes her writing as an “ongoing discussion
of contemporary urban life with an underlying Pacific politique”. She is of
Samoan, Mangaian and Irish descent.
Sarah Laing is the author of two novels, Dead People’s Music
and Fall of Light, and a short story collection, Coming Up Roses.
With a background in illustration and design, she runs the popular comic blog Let Me Be Frank, which she started when she held the Frank Sargeson
Fellowship in 2008. She has contributed comics to magazines, illustrated
children’s books, and co-edited Three Words: An Anthology of Aotearoa/NZ
Women’s Comics. Her latest book, Mansfield & Me, is a graphic
biography and memoir, which compares the life of New Zealand’s most famous
writer Katherine Mansfield, to Sarah’s own life of creativity, insecurity and
celebrity obsession.
Rachael King has been the programme director of WORD
Christchurch since 2013. She is the author of two books for adults, The
Sound of Butterflies (winner of Best First Novel at the Montana New Zealand
Book Awards) and Magpie Hall (long-listed for the IMPAC Dublin Literary
Award), and one for children, Red Rocks, which won New Zealand’s
longest-running literary award, the Esther Glen Medal. Her work has been
translated into eight languages and has garnered critical praise
worldwide.
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