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Listen to the silence
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.

Book Review: Two Girls In A Boat
Wellingtonian Emma Martin won the Commonwealth Short Story Prize with the title story of this first collection.

Book Review: Americanah
One of the more startling observations in a book filled with acute and startling observations is that Africans only really come to consider they are “black” when they go to the United States.

Writers Festival: Giant books bring the past to life
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.

Writers Festival: Revealed - a name of shame
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.

Dan Brown returns to Europe for Inferno
Dan Brown sees the world a little differently than the average person.

Business guru Kawasaki points the way
Former Apple chief evangelist and now entrepreneur and author Guy Kawasaki says he wants to help New Zealand be even more enchanting on his upcoming visit here on Wednesday.

A life more ordinary
Tired? Stressed? Unhappy and pressed for time? Well broadcaster Wallace Chapman has some words of advice for you, writes Greg Dixon.

Libraries lend a hand to youth
Far from becoming irrelevant in the digital age, libraries are adapting to become more like youth clubs, finds Danielle Wright.

Binding commitment
Danielle Wright finds a busy kids' book club in Mangere Bridge that's about a lot more than reading and writing.

Book Review: Bangs
Steven Eldred-Grigg is a well-known and respected popular historian and novelist. Bangs is the fourth book in a series of novels that began with the much loved Oracles and Miracles, published in 1987.

Writers Festival: For whom the bell tolls
She’s best-known for her detective novels but British author Kate Atkinson’s latest work is a change of direction, writes Linda Herrick.

Writers Festival: A sanctuary of magic
Carlos Ruiz Zafon tells Stephen Jewell why he likes visiting bookstores and supermarkets.

When robots take over essential tasks
Sherry Turkle shows up begging for a latte. She's left her wallet in her hotel room. She's exhausted, she says, and could do with a coffee.

The Great Gatsby: Different tune for great classic
Dominic Corry went behind the scenes on Baz Luhrmann's extravagant film adaptation of classic novel The Great Gatsby.

Book Review: Maya's Notebook
Nicky Pellegrino delves into a harrowing tale of survival that's also a story about love.

My happy place: Peter Hayden, author
Peter Hayden - nature history filmmaker and author, and actor.

One man's extraordinary steps
A running regime that would defy most of us is soul food to Malcolm Law, writes Andy Kenworthy.

Book Review: The Writing Class
People write - or want to write - for many reasons. For some, it is a compulsion, an itch that must be scratched. For others, it has more to do with the narcissistic conviction that the world wants to know what they're thinking and feeling.

Book Review: She Rises
For those readers eagerly anticipating the next effort from Sarah Waters, the queen of historical revisionism, look no further than Kate Worsley's debut novel.

Book Review: Secret Life Of James Cook
A few years ago I visited the charming English port town of Whitby and was intrigued to discover its crucial role in the lives of two very different men whose names continue to echo down the centuries: Count Dracula and Captain James Cook.

Writers Festival: A brief history of seven centuries
The master of historical sagas, Edward Rutherfurd, talks to David Larsen about the symmetry of his writing.

Would you judge a man by what he reads?
If the adage "you are what you eat" rings true then I'm some sort of pickled mollusc given my penchant for clams, mussels, oysters and a crisp chardonnay. But I suspect "you are what you read" is more to the point.

Rebecca Kamm: The oldest romance writer in the world
Meet just-turned-105-years-old romance novelist Ida Pollock, the world's oldest producer of bodice rippers.