TOM FITZSIMONS scans the stellar programme of this year’s Auckland Writers & Readers Festival.

THIS IS my first Auckland Writers & Readers Festival and the organisers have kindly landed a huge haul for the occasion. Some truly big overseas names here – and a good scattering of locals too. Five who I’ll definitely be seeing:

J. M. Coetzee, even with the rather large qualification that he won’t be taking any questions. It’s a coup to have got him here at all, and they don’t make books much better than Disgrace in my reading experience. So probably one Nobel Laureate worth catching in action.

Michael Pollan, author most famously of The Omnivore’s Dilemma – because I like the way he thinks, and reasons, and writes. By which I mean that he’s ethical without being overzealous, thorough without being boring and always fresh and spare. Notwithstanding all that, he recently told New York Times readers to grow their own gardens instead of buying New Zealand produce, so we might have a bone to pick with him.

Junot Diaz because he’s both flavour of the month and actually awesome. Though for the latter two I’m only going on one thoughtful online interview he gave. His just-announced Pulitzer-winner, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, is still sitting by my bed, to be read in the next two weeks before I hear him.

Anne Enright, who’s also everywhere you want to be after her Mr Pip-pipping Booker Prize win for The Gathering. Dark, rough, raw, wry and smart are the kinds of words that get thrown around her work. She’s also apparently none too happy with a Kiwi journo after a recent interview, though it was her who came off grumpy in the Listener’s published piece.

Poets John Burnside and Ryan Knighton both look like the real thing, though I’m not very familiar with either. Both have written memoirs (and Burnside novels) as well, so it’s not like they’re just lazy romantics who survive on grants and sleep for most of the day.

Novelists Sarah Hall and Peter Ho Davies, former-Thatcherite-who’s-seen-the-light Professor John Gray and biographers Simon Montefiore and Hermione Lee should all be enlightening. And you know the Kiwis, so I won’t list them off.

Okay, so more than five, but this is a good one. Now to the pile by the bed.


Also attending in May are the following past Lumière interviewees: Steve Braunias, who talked birds, books and asking the tough questions with TOM FITZSIMONS in 2007; Maxine Alterio, whose books Live News and Ribbons of Grace are discussed in detail with JENNIFER VAN BEYNEN; Paula Morris, who fielded ten questions from AMY BROWN; Making Lists for Frances Hodgkins author Paula Green, who caught up with JOAN FLEMING and SARAH JANE BARNETT during the Arts Festival’s Writers and Readers Week; and documentarian Annie Goldson, who chatted to BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM about her film An Island Calling earlier this year.



AKLDWRIT