Six of the Best: Auckland Writers & Readers Festival 2007
ALEXANDER BISLEY picks six authors not to be missed at this year’s enthralling Auckland Writers & Readers Festival.
WHOA, the Auckland Writers & Readers Festival is exciting, take advantage. In a glaring omission the inimitable Steve Braunias will not be attendance with his new book How to Watch a Bird, but I guess you can’t have it all.
Richard Ford’s work is a knock-out. A rare blend of observation, compassion, imagination and eloquence. His work gains a new force in person, he blew away Wellington’s 2004 International Arts Festival.
Pico Iyer, self-dubbed “a global village on two legs”, is a terrific, razor- lucid travel writer. Despite his penchant for McDonalds, he can’t help but stimulate and transport. Kim Hill told me Iyer was “one of the most generous interviewees I’ve ever had”. I am off to a Fijian beach to enjoy his Sun after Dark: Flights into the Foreign (Allen and Unwin).
“I have some extremely depressing news. We’ve just run out of wine. What are we going to do about it?” Woody Allen would be pleased to write a line like Richard E Grant’s zingers in Withnail and I. The author of Wah-Wah may not be as prolific as the Woodman, but he’s created some indelible moments.
Ooh embarassing, in “Books Left on Buses” Grant and other luminaries look at the books we once loved but now run from.
Unfortunately, I won’t be able to make pugnacious, snappy art writer Matthew Collings’ session. But anyone who says something like “We are really too depraved and idiotic as a society now for art” gets my vote.
“Poetry reminds us that it’s enough to be alive, we’re all rich,” festivalista Glenn Colquhoun told me. Big, genial Shane Koyczan apparently has the gift.
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WHOA, the Auckland Writers & Readers Festival is exciting, take advantage. In a glaring omission the inimitable Steve Braunias will not be attendance with his new book How to Watch a Bird, but I guess you can’t have it all.Richard Ford’s work is a knock-out. A rare blend of observation, compassion, imagination and eloquence. His work gains a new force in person, he blew away Wellington’s 2004 International Arts Festival.
Pico Iyer, self-dubbed “a global village on two legs”, is a terrific, razor- lucid travel writer. Despite his penchant for McDonalds, he can’t help but stimulate and transport. Kim Hill told me Iyer was “one of the most generous interviewees I’ve ever had”. I am off to a Fijian beach to enjoy his Sun after Dark: Flights into the Foreign (Allen and Unwin).
“I have some extremely depressing news. We’ve just run out of wine. What are we going to do about it?” Woody Allen would be pleased to write a line like Richard E Grant’s zingers in Withnail and I. The author of Wah-Wah may not be as prolific as the Woodman, but he’s created some indelible moments.
Ooh embarassing, in “Books Left on Buses” Grant and other luminaries look at the books we once loved but now run from.
Unfortunately, I won’t be able to make pugnacious, snappy art writer Matthew Collings’ session. But anyone who says something like “We are really too depraved and idiotic as a society now for art” gets my vote.
“Poetry reminds us that it’s enough to be alive, we’re all rich,” festivalista Glenn Colquhoun told me. Big, genial Shane Koyczan apparently has the gift.
The seventh Auckland Writers & Readers Festival delights from Thursday May 24 until Sunday May 27. Public bookings are open, with details, along with the complete festival programme, guest bios, interviews and reviews, available online at writersfestival.co.nz.
