Opening with the eternal question - 'what do you do with a BA in English?' - Avenue Q dispenses a bright and breezy antidote to the pressures of life in the big city.

This memoir by New Zealand children's author William Taylor is, I am delighted to report, an endearing collection of his experiences.

A near-full house of fans greeted Australian writer Thomas Keneally when he walked on stage at the ASB Centre yesterday morning for an hour of soul-baring revelations and a great deal of humour.

Lionel Shriver and Charlie Higson tackle the sensitive topic of death in very different ways.

There are fewer Indian jokes this year, even though they are clearly what the audience is after - the thick accents Mohanbhai did pull out had the room roaring.

Four glass artists tell us why they chose the medium and what inspires their unique creations.

Elizabeth Smither is a prolific and award-winning writer with 17 volumes of poetry, six novels and a number of short story collections published.

Charlotte Grimshaw once described her last novel, Foreign City, as a kind of "layer cake" of fiction, reality and fictionalised reality.

Writer Lionel Shriver tells Stephen Jewell how a friend's illness inspired her to take on the injustices of the healthcare system.

Australian author Tom Keneally talks to Graham Reid about how criminals and the rich were thrown together when the country was founded.

At its most pure and best, jazz is a live art where musicians disassemble, explore, then reconstruct melodies and rhythms right before your ears.

There are Baxter self-quotations and talk of cut-throats and fowlhouses for literary experts to spot, but you don't have to know a line of the great men's work to enjoy the play.

Beneath the sequins and smiles, all is not well in the world of ballroom dancing in New Zealand.

Dark takes his cue from mysterious electronic producers like Burial, whose identity was a closely guarded secret until he was nominated for the 2008 Mercury Music Prize.

Charlotte Grimshaw's new novel stars a National Party leader tipped to be the next Prime Minister. Does this man resemble anyone we know? Linda Herrick reports

A workshop performance by members of the RNZB, set to the tune of Lady Gaga's Bad Romance, has become a YouTube hit.

What do Maori haka, Fijian firewalking and yoga have in common? According to a book by Canadian writer Andrew Potter they are all part of an authenticity hoax.

That Ian McEwan, what a comedian. It's not a phrase you come across often.