Pico Iyer has been conversing with the Dalai Lama for 33 years. Iyer talks Tibet, faith and Martin Scorsese with Lumière’s Associate Editor ALEXANDER BISLEY.

The Phoenix Foundation’s Samuel Flynn Scott talks acoustics and politics – both sounded out on his new album, Straight Answer Machine, with band Bunnies on Ponies – to BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM.

BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM talks to Moana Maniapoto – formerly of the Moahunters, now together with the Tribe – about the challenges of representing ‘Maori music’.

Steve Abel’s Flax Happy, with the help of some impressive contributing musicians, mines a “haunting spareness” with lyrics “fiercely elemental and moody”. He talks to BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM about making his sophomore album.

He won the Pulitzer for fiction last year and the critics are besotted. He jumps the wall between nerdy and cool, and his sister told him his book would never make Oprah’s list because it includes anal sex and too much swearing. So why, asks TOM FITZSIMONS at the Auckland Writers & Readers Festival, doesn’t Junot Díaz truly satisfy?

Though still a do-it-yourselfer at heart, Chris Knox – together with band The Nothing – has turned out a “warmer, more... polished sound than a lot of his more famous creations” on new album A Warm Gun, writes BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM.

From their launchpad of eccentric hip-hop, Coco Solid release an ambitious double album, Radical Bad Attack, in June. Titular frontwoman Jessica Hansell talks to BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM about going to the next level.

His hands in many pies, Wellington-based musician, producer and record label owner Bevan Smith talks Skallander, and other ventures, with BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM.

PETER BISLEY catches up with striking tenor Jesus Garcia, playing Rodolfo in the NBR New Zealand Opera’s production of Giacomo Puccini’s La Bohème.

AMY BROWN quizzes American travel writer Thomas Kohnstamm ahead of the Auckland Writers & Readers Festival. His first book, Do Travel Writers Go to Hell?, is published this month.

Heather O’Neill’s debut novel Lullabies for Little Criminals tells the story of Baby, a twelve-year-old girl living with her junkie father, Jules, in a less than desirable suburb of Montreal. As Jules goes further off the rails, Baby is shifted from foster home to scummy apartment to juvenile detention centre. Yet despite such grim circumstances, she retains her wit and optimism (and the reader’s sympathies), and is unfailingly generous in her assessment of others. Ahead of the Auckland Writers & Readers Festival, GEMMA FREEMAN spoke to O’Neill in Montreal about writing, prizes, and how to tell if you’re American or Canadian.

Anders Falstie-Jensen is one third of the junta running The Rebel Alliance, an independent theatre company about to present a revival of their first production, The Orderly, in Auckland and then Upper Hutt. The play is written and performed by Michael Downey and directed by Falstie-Jensen. RENEE LIANG caught up with Anders recently to talk about the dark art of directing, writing and reviving plays.

Penny Ashton aka Hot Pink is a force to be reckoned with... award-winning performance poet, comedy diva and champion of true poetics. RENEE LIANG caught up with Penny ahead of Poetry Idol at the Auckland Writers & Readers Festival.

Author of Live News, a collection of short stories, and currently working on her second historical novel, Maxine Alterio took the time to speak with JENNIFER VAN BEYNEN on the phone from Dunedin about her first historical novel, her writing process, the disparity of her narrators – gender-wise and culturally – and what it takes to produce a book so historically, culturally, and emotionally rich.

Visiting New Zealand in May, Malcolm Middleton opens his doomsday pamphlet to BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM, talks Arab Strap, and about becoming a One Hit Wonder.

On the back of WOMAD and a self-titled EP, Auckland-based An Emerald City are set for bigger things. BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM talked to Sam Handley, guitarist, one of the key founding members of the band.

TIM G talks to the intense, intelligent, deeply determined Henry Rollins, ahead of two Spoken Word performances in April.

Returning Lumière photographer CATHERINE BISLEY surveyed the colour at a new year’s WOMAD with camera in hand. We present the best of her images in gallery format.

Dudley Benson’s debut album, The Awakening, “could prove the beginning of a ridiculously talented maverick,” reckons BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM. He talks more with the charming chamber-pop musician, whose most recent tour completed a circuit of historic New Zealand churches.

Green Fire Islands is a unique and historic collaboration between Irish and Maori/Pakeha artists, which “sets out to build a musical bridge between two creative island cultures, Ireland and New Zealand.” RENEE LIANG caught up with Creative director Bronwen Christianos, recently at WOMAD.

Smackbang is the hottest young thing in Auckland theatre right now. It’s a new theatre collective that aims to keep actors acting, directors directing and writers writing – with an emphasis on growing the local theatre scene. RENEE LIANG interviewed Smackbang’s Charlie Unwin.

Before departing for the United States and Europe, Nik Brinkman of Over the Atlantic spoke to BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM about sound shifts, album Junica, and the Bermuda Triangle.

AMY BROWN talks to Brigid Hughes, judge of the Prize in Modern Letters, about literary magazines, the qualities of a good editor, and judging New Zealand’s richest prize for new writers.

Paula Green’s book Making Lists for Frances Hodgkins is described as a poetic memoir ‘in the light of art’. JOAN FLEMING and SARAH JANE BARNETT caught up with Green during Writers and Readers Week at the New Zealand International Arts Festival to ask about the process of writing, her love of Italy and the dialogue she has created between poetry and art.

Craig Sherborne, whose essays, poems, and two powerful memoirs, Hoi Polloi and Muck, have brought him to Wellington for Writers and Readers Week at the New Zealand International Arts Festival, talked to AMY BROWN in between signing books.

During Wellington’s Writers and Readers Week at the New Zealand International Arts Festival, SAM BRADFORD talked to English-born David Mitchell, the author of four generally acclaimed novels: Ghostwritten, Number9dream, Cloud Atlas and most recently Black Swan Green.

Wilco are one of the world’s biggest alternative groups, with critically and commercially successful albums such as Being There, Summerteeth, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and A Ghost is Born. SIMON SWEETMAN catches up with drummer Glen Kotche, as the band play their first shows in the country since 2003’s Big Day Out.

Led by the precocious front-man Zach Condon, Beirut are causing a ruckus within both the so-called “indie” and “world music” worlds. They’ve been in New Zealand recently, playing two shows in Auckland and Wellington, and playing at Taranaki’s WOMAD festival. BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM catches up with Perrin Cloutier and Paul Collins from the band, just after they played their second show at WOMAD.

JAMES BROWN sounds out Canadian avante-garde poet Christian Bök, guest at this year’s Writers and Readers Week during the New Zealand International Arts Festival.

During Writers and Readers Week at the New Zealand International Arts Festival, AMY BROWN talks to Caribbean novelist and short-story writer, Mayra Montero about morals, fear, translation and la verdad de la mentira.