Tough subjects, tackled sensitively

William Taylor. Photo / Supplied

A year ago, the Auckland Writers & Readers Festival had to keep calm and carry on amid the Civic carpark renovations surrounding the Aotea Centre. A year on, the drilling and disruption continues, but the audiences at Friday's daytime sessions took it in their stride.

A good number attended Telling Tales, with William Taylor, one of our leading writers for children and young adults - and a former mayor of Ohakune.

Taylor recalled the day he and Jim Bolger attended the Ohakune giant carrot unveiling, when the heavens opened and a helicopter hovered overhead to lift the sacks covering the great work.

A graffiti artist had been at work, inscribing the 10m vegetable with one black word: wanker.

Taylor's books have tackled tough subjects: same sex attraction, teenage boys experimenting with alcohol and cigarettes, and child abuse.

One of his novels, Land of Milk and Honey, dealt with the tragedy of the children sent from Britain after WWII, including hundreds who came to New Zealand and never saw their families again. Taylor reckoned our politicians should read the book, then think about an apology.

Thomas Keneally and Anne Salmond were well-paired in a lively hour on writing about historical figures and events, chaired by Kim Hill. The difference between the Australian and New Zealand contexts could not have been more marked, with Keneally coming from a country whose colonists arrived in a "purpose built penal system" and set about obliterating the dispossessed.

Salmond, on the other hand, grew up in the Gisborne region where she forged close relationships with Maori, and learnt the stories of the ancestors as if they "were just next door".

While Keneally says there is an emergence of interest in Australian history among Australians, Salmond - in response to Hill's query about whether we are becoming more enlightened - observed that she had gone through a period of listening to talkback radio, and deduced that sometimes it was like going back to 1810 in terms of racism.

Later in the afternoon, British novelist Jill Dawson and New Plymouth poet-novelist spoke at a sparsely attended session which became more interesting as the two women started to relax.