Twelve Questions: Albert Wendt
I feel privileged and honoured. The recurring fear is: Have I wasted my life writing?
I feel privileged and honoured. The recurring fear is: Have I wasted my life writing?
The final day of the Auckland Writers and Readers Festival was bookended by standing ovations for two of New Zealand's ground-breaking writers of the past 50 years.
The big issue with writers' festivals is that you can't be at three or four events at once. So the rich array of offerings presented the ongoing dilemma of which writer to see.
I am fortunate enough to spend more time in my happy place than anywhere else. My happy place is my office/library. It's on the ground floor of our three-level townhouse in Ponsonby.
New Zealand’s Poet Laureate, Ian Wedde, has written two of my all-time favourite poetry collections: The Commonplace Odes and Three Regrets And A Hymn To Beauty.
Rutherfurd, whose new tome is called Paris, had an extra hour added to yesterday's Writers & Readers schedule after selling out tomorrow and recalled having to speak to a row of schoolboys scowling at him.
The city of Auckland was named after "a dud ex-colonial mediocrity who stuffed up on a quite spectacular scale", says British historian William Dalrymple.
Graham Reid talks to Australian writer Wayne Macauley about food porn and creativity.
Lover of literature Anne O'Brien tells tales of books, bags and Boris the bear.
The master of historical sagas, Edward Rutherfurd, talks to David Larsen about the symmetry of his writing.
Stephen Jewell talks to esteemed British author Max Hastings about battles won and lost.
London-based American writer Patrick Ness tells David Larsen how a childhood accident inspired his new novel.
Book lovers, put that novel down for a sec, here's a festival that may just appeal to your love of literature.
Eoin Colfer, the Irish creator of teen criminal mastermind Artemis Fowl, tells Stephen Jewell why his next episode will be his last.
Australian novelist Kathy Lette tells Stephen Jewell how she sees the comedy within the chaos of daily life with an Asperger’s child and how she was picked up by Billy Connolly.
This Wednesday marks the start of the 2012 Auckland Writers & Readers Festival. Danielle Wright talks to New Zealand authors about their books set in Auckland to help you discover your neighbourhood through literature.
Emily Perkins' sumptuous new book, The Forrests, is a novel to savour slowly: line by line, character by character, revelation by revelation.
Author A.D. Miller’s debut novel defies the traditional crime thriller genre as it explores the Russian capital’s underbelly. Stephen Jewell writes.
Westerners shouldn't rely on Asian consumers to revive the international economy, visiting author Chandran Nair tells Chris Barton.
New Zealand writer David Hill tells Linda Herrick how a song triggered his latest picture book and how he called upon his own uncles’ memories.