Snapshots from the Auckland Writers' Festival

Books editor GILBERT WONG says the success of last weekend's Auckland Writers' Festival showed there is an audience hungry for ideas.

Amy Tan took us to the "holiest moment" in her mother's life, the point of her death; Naomi Wolf aped Oprah; 89-year-old Allen Curnow, the elder statesman of New Zealand letters, read from his work and left his audience spellbound.

The Auckland Writers' Festival marked its third outing last weekend with arguably the most distinguished array of writers to date and with more than 6500 people from throughout the North Island thronging the venues at the Hyatt Regency and Old Government House in what was, on Sunday, shocking weather.

The question the organisers face now is what form the festival will take in future. Last year it was signalled that the event would run every two years, in the off-year from the International Festival of Arts Writers' Week in Wellington.

This has not been finalised and the organising committee will this month canvass their options.

Penny Hansen, who holds the sole paid position of the organising team and has been the bedrock on which the festival resides, has decided to move on, to bring new blood into the festival and free up her own time.

What the weekend did show is that there is an audience hungry for ideas and debate, especially about the future of the Auckland region, the theme of the festival.

Snapshots from the weekend include,

Spookiest moment: In the session Yin Eyes: An Hour with Amy Tan, the author, svelte in a pillbox-goes-oriental hat, spoke movingly and wryly about her mother's final illness. Her mother was a ferocious beauty, a matriarch who had battled with the knowledge of the suicides of the many women in her extended family who chose it as an act of final defiance.

Tan's mother was a woman used to having the last word, a believer in the Holy Ghost and other ghosts of the departed. But when she slipped into a coma, her attendant children thought that she had missed her opportunity.

Said Tan: "My mother was to have a last word and it was this musical sigh, an outpouring."

At this exact moment, with the audience straining to hear, the Hyatt's fire alarms sounded. They quieted. Tan ad-libbed, peering up, "No, Mother, not like that." The alarms sounded again and the ballroom was evacuated.

Scary revelation No 1: Herald columnist Brian Rudman in the Let's Talk City forum: on why Auckland doesn't work: "At last count there are 380 politicians meant to be running this place."

Best-prepared author: Amy Tan again. When the fire alarms had earlier sounded at 7.30 am, she was ready to go, with her own smoke mask.

Award for best local adaptation: Edward Rutherfurd, detailed researcher of historical novels, who in the session Making the Past Breathe pronounced "turangawaewae" as if he was born in Whangarei.

Runner-up: American author Mike Davis, who turned up for his first session sporting a pair of thonged sandals. His base in Hawaii might explain it.

Scary revelation No 2: Urban prophet and staunch Marxist Mike Davis in What's politics got to do with it? "Last year it was noted that 60 per cent of the independent bookstores in American had disappeared, forced to close because of the competition from chainstores in malls."

Award for resemblance to subject matter: Jane Smiley, author of Horse Heaven, who shook her mane of blond hair much like the horses she is so fond of. She publicly admitted that the only reason she came to New Zealand was to visit the famous stud farms of Cambridge and Matamata to inspect prize horseflesh.

Best coined word: "Blokerati," by historian Jamie Belich in Piggy, Crumpy and A.R.D., when suggesting that Fairburn, Glover and Keith Sinclair were damn fine blokes as well as committed literati. They could fix a car and a poem.

Gratuitous political joke: As told by Barry Gustafson in the same session. "Muldoon was having Katherine O'Regan on about the sign on her door that said, 'Women can do anything'.

"No, you can't," he said, "you can't prop up the Auckland front row."

Then he waited a beat, as if thinking again, "No, I'm wrong. Jenny Shipley could."

Best-coined phrase: "Trans-national suburb," by Mike Davis, to describe the places emptied by economic diaspora but enriched by foreign earnings.

Chutzpah prize: Naomi Wolf, staunch feminist and liberal apologist at the Buddle Findlay dinner, spoke on ethical leadership. Asked to name one, she came up with Bill Clinton. Audience reaction: general hilarity, ribald jokes, not helped by Wolf's plea to young women: "Don't ever swallow your truth."

Christian among the lions metaphor: Naomi Wolf, again, who, after delivering her lecture, said, "Now, I'm going to do an Oprah," and advanced into her audience in Jerry Springer fashion, firing questions at bemused legal and literary minds. Nobody exclaimed, "You go, girl!"

Most aptly named session: Lone Kauri: An Hour with Allen Curnow. The 89-year-old poet read powerfully from his work.