An autobiographical insight into musician Patti Smith's early life and years in New York

McEwan shows us all the fear and loathing of the modern world in a packet of crisps.

Artist Don Binney has been attracted to the Waitakere coast since childhood. He tells Alan Perrott how the diverse landscape can mean so much to so many

Booker Prize-winning novelist Ian McEwan tells Boyd Tonkin how a trip to the Arctic helped inspire his new satirical novel about science, scientists and climate change

Author and columnist Nicky Pellegrino has gone public on how she was raped at knifepoint as a young woman - and her attacker was never found.

Drawing on your own experiences for a novel can be a perilous affair, finds Nicky Pellegrino.

The revivification of the Auckland Town Hall organ has certainly captured the imagination of the city.

Anita Shreve is fascinated with relationships. And this story, which explores a new marriage set against the backdrop of Africa, puts yet another relationship under the microscope.

Over the years - and rather unkindly, in my opinion - Joanna Trollope's books have tended to be relegated to the category of "Aga saga".

Forget the mundane, give your life meaning ... become enthused and inspired. We meet people who have followed their hearts, and share simple ways to fuel your fire for life.

Stephen Jewell talks to author Andrea Levy about slavery, story-telling and holidays on the North Shore.

There was no mistaking a historic occasion when Aucklanders packed the Town Hall to sample its newly restored organ.

All will be revealed at a grand concert, featuring John Wells, three choirs and an orchestra.

Frisky and Mannish are musically adroit, vocally gifted and brilliant mimics teaching Pop Philosophy 101 at fast forward and delivered on high rotate.

Free-thinking and gifted intellectuals, or a bunch of dissolute subversives "who lived in squares but loved in triangles"?

The Royal New Zealand Ballet's triple bill seasons are always an opportunity for dancers and audiences to explore new territory.