17 April 2021Who is Kim Jong Un? In The Great Successor: The Secret Rise and Rule of Kim Jong Un, journalist Anna Fifield presents a captivating portrait of North Korea and its sometimes ridiculous, sometimes deadly leader. Featuring exclusive access to key figures in Kim Jong Un’s life, The Great Successor earned international acclaim for its insi…

31 October 2020 | WORD Christchurch Spring FestivalChristchurch has arguably undergone more change and upheaval than any other city in New Zealand this century. Just as rocky is the relationship between the city and its people. We ask five writers with connections to the city: How do you feel about Christchurch? Is your relationship to a place diff…

31 October 2020 | WORD Christchurch Spring FestivalNew Zealand women have published poetry for over 150 years. In her landmark book Wild Honey, poet Paula Green celebrates and makes connections between 201 of them, from emerging poets and those who are household names, who lived unconventional lives for their art and who gave a poetic voice to resi…

1 November 2020 | WORD Christchurch Spring FestivalCaptain Charles Hazlitt Upham is the only combat soldier ever to win the Victoria Cross twice. His acts of bravery in World War II meant he probably deserved six more.The mystery of how a reserved, modest, slightly-built farm valuer from New Zealand could be so ferocious and fearless in battle has …

1 November 2020 | WORD Christchurch Spring FestivalRalph Hotere was one of Aotearoa’s most significant artists. His life was just as remarkable as his art. Hotere invited the poet, novelist and biographer Vincent O’Sullivan to write his life story in 2005. Now, this book — the result of years of research and many conversations with Hotere and his f…

31 October 2020 | WORD Christchurch Spring FestivalThrough their own marks about the land and its people, be it in ink or paint, Grahame Sydney, Brian Turner and Owen Marshall offer a love song to the South Island, in particular Central Otago, in their new book Landmarks. Hear the stories behind the words and pictures, chaired by Fiona Farrell.…

30 October 2020 | WORD Christchurch Spring FestivalKo Aotearoa Tātou | We Are New Zealand is bursting with new works of fiction, nonfiction, poetry and visual art created in response to the editors’ questions:What is New Zealand now, in all its rich variety and contradiction, darkness and light? Who are New Zealanders?The starting point for the ant…

1 November 2020 | WORD Christchurch Spring FestivalThe ongoing containment of the coronavirus pandemic in Aotearoa has been in no small part due to the co-operation of what Jacinda Ardern affectionately calls our ‘team of five million’. It has been a triumph in communication, with clear messaging that New Zealanders have followed. An essential part…

31 October 2020 | WORD Christchurch Spring FestivalWe bring together two young first generation Iranian New Zealanders to tell their extraordinary stories.In The Girl from Revolution Road, writer and filmmaker Ghazaleh Golbakhsh speaks powerfully of displacement and living between two worlds. Her essays range from a childhood in war-torn Iran, to l…

31 October 2020 | WORD Christchurch Spring FestivalThe horrifying events of the March 15 terror attacks on two Christchurch mosques in 2019 must never be forgotten. Husna Ahmed was a victim of the shooting, killed while looking for her husband, who was in a wheelchair. In Husna’s Story, Farid Ahmed accounts his wife’s life, including a tragic accou…

31 October 2020 | WORD Christchurch Spring FestivalNot in Narrow Seas is a major contribution by economist Brian Easton to the history of Aotearoa New Zealand. It covers everything from the traditional gift-based Māori economy to the Ardern government’s attempt to deal with the economic challenges of global warming. It is also the first economic hi…

31 October 2020 | WORD Christchurch Spring FestivalBecky Manawatu exploded onto the literary landscape last year with her book Auē, a story of broken family. Steve Braunias called it the best book of 2019: ‘a deep and powerful work, maybe even the most successfully achieved portrayal of underclass New Zealand life since Once Were Warriors.’ It went…

30 October 2020 | WORD Christchurch Spring FestivalIn her new memoir Bella, Annabel Langbein, New Zealand’s most popular cookbook author, writes about her remarkable life and how food has shaped it, highlighting some of the recipes that have resonated most strongly with her over the years.From her childhood fascination with cooking to a teenage fli…

30 October 2020 | WORD Christchurch Spring FestivalPoet, novelist, short story writer, playwright, and librettist, Vincent O’Sullivan is one of our most acclaimed and versatile writers. He was New Zealand’s Poet Laureate from 2013 to 2015 and, in Kirsty Gunn’s words, ‘continues to have a prominent ongoing role in the public literary life of this co…

30 October 2020 | WORD Christchurch Spring FestivalPresented by Heartland BankOur gala night opens the weekend with six of our distinguished writers responding to the shifting world around us. What does it mean to find courage in the face of a global pandemic, race protests, border strife and climate anxiety? Each writer will deliver a short keynot…

31 October 2020 | WORD Christchurch Spring FestivalSupported by the Ngāi Tahu Research CentreA Long Time Coming: The story of Ngāi Tahu’s treaty settlement negotiations tells the extraordinary, complex and compelling story of Ngāi Tahu’s treaty settlement negotiations with the Crown and shines a light, for both Māori and Pākehā, on a crucial part o…

31 October 2020 | WORD Christchurch Spring FestivalPresented by Milford Asset ManagementJoin MC Joe Bennett for this outrageous festival institution guaranteed to entertain and provoke. Is it the end of the world as we know it? Arguing for or against are The Spinoff editor Toby Manhire, satirist Tom Scott, novelist Paula Morris, comedian Guy Willia…

1 November 2020 | WORD Christchurch Spring FestivalPresented by Pegasus HealthMatt Calman’s The Longest Day describes how training for the Coast to Coast helped him find a way up the perilous path from rock bottom.Fellow journalist Jehan Casinader (This Is Not How It Ends) found the power of storytelling helped him to survive.Both men talk with Eka…

1 November 2020 | WORD Christchurch Spring FestivalPresented by Milford Asset ManagementSupported by the Katherine Mansfield Fellowship administered by the Arts Foundation Te Tumu ToiFor fifty years, writers have travelled to Menton in the south of France to take up the Katherine Mansfield Fellowship. While there, they work in a studio attached to …

29 October 2020 | WORD Christchurch Spring FestivalPresented by LatitudeTo open the festival, we are bringing back one of our most popular events!This year we invite four extraordinary women to tell stories from their adventurous lives and talk about what drives them to take risks, in their life and work. Hear Kaiora Tipene, one half of the fabulou…

31 October 2020 | WORD Christchurch Spring FestivalJoin one of Aotearoa’s master storytellers, Witi Ihimaera, for a very special evening of myths and music. His new book, Navigating the Stars, is a spellbinding and provocative retelling of traditional Maori myths for the twenty-first century. From Hawaiki to Aotearoa, the ancient navigators brought…

1 November 2020 | WORD Christchurch Spring Festival‘In this landscape we invent as it invents us.’Dramatic, sublime, fragile, work-a-day, the landscape of Aotearoa New Zealand, and in particular the landscape of Te Waipounamu, is all of these, and more. We grow out of the places we live in as organically as any other living thing. How do poets, our…

31 October 2020 | WORD Christchurch Spring FestivalIn Laura Jean McKay‘s visceral and eerily topical novel, The Animals in That Country, a pandemic is sweeping Australia. This is no ordinary flu though – the virus enables humans to communicate with animals. But protagonist Jean, ‘hard-drinking, foul-mouthed, and allergic to bullshit’ is no Dr Dolit…

1 November 2020 | WORD Christchurch Spring FestivalPip Adam has writen one of the most talked about novels of 2020, Nothing to See, which follows mysterious doppelgängers Peggy and Greta. Philip Matthews described it as ‘a novel about shame, loneliness, about wanting to do good and hoping for second chances’, ‘a real achievement’ that is ‘deeply af…

1 November 2020 | WORD Christchurch Spring FestivalTwo novels take medical mishaps as a starting point. In Carl Shuker‘s acclaimed A Mistake, surgeon Elizabeth Taylor, a ‘gifted, driven woman excelling in a male-dominated culture’, deals with the fallout from an operation that goes gravely wrong. Eileen Merriman‘s new novel for adults, The Silence …

30 October 2020 | WORD Christchurch Spring FestivalYou can’t choose your family, or can you? Two new novels from Christchurch writers explore the bonds of family.In Carl Nixon‘s gripping thriller The Tally Stick, three children are left stranded in the bush after their parents die in a car accident. In Chloe Lane‘s debut novel, The Swimmers, a daug…

1 November 2020 | WORD Christchurch Spring FestivalElizabeth Knox has one of the most singular voices in New Zealand fiction. In The Absolute Book, she once again pulls off the undefinable, with an urgently relevant novel that is part fantasy, part thriller, and part meditation on books, libraries and the environment. Don’t miss her conversation wi…

31 October 2020 | WORD Christchurch Spring FestivalBill Manhire is not only one of our leading poets but was a mentor to hundreds through the International Institute of Modern Letters, where he established the MA in Creative Writing, which for a long time was simply known as ‘Bill Manhire’s writing course.’American writer Teju Cole says of Manhire,…

26 August 2019 | WORD Christchurch Shifting Points of ViewIn his first book, 'The Other Side of Freedom: Race and justice in a divided America', Black Lives Matter activist DeRay Mckesson lays down the intellectual, pragmatic, and political framework for a new liberation movement.Mckesson places an idea of shared hope for a better future at the cor…

Verb Wellington and WORD Christchurch, in association with Amnesty International, present Behrouz Boochani: No Friend but the Mountains.In December 2019, WORD Christchurch and Verb Wellington joined together to present a very special event in Wellington with Behrouz Boochani and novelist Lloyd Jones, whose novel, The Cage, is a parable inspired by …

Recorded at the 2018 WORD Christchurch Festival, 1 September 2018We welcome Yaba Badoe, award-winning documentary filmmaker and author of A Jigsaw of Fire and Stars, a powerful, haunting story that steps seamlessly from the horrors of people-trafficking to the magic of African folklore. In 2014 Badoe was nominated for a Distinguished Woman of Afric…

31 August 2019 | WORD Christchurch Shifting Points of ViewThe New Zealand Wars profoundly shaped the course and direction of our nation’s history. Fought between the Crown and various groups of Māori between 1845 and 1872, remnants and reminders from these conflicts and their aftermath can be found all over the country. The wars are an integral par…

13 September 2019 | WORD Christchurch Shifting Points of ViewTo kick off a weekend celebrating the 2019 Ngaio Marsh Awards, we welcome the charismatic Val McDermid, formidable Scottish crime writer. Val’s new book, How the Dead Speak, is a shocking, masterfully plotted novel that will leave both long-time fans and new readers breathless. She talks …

31 August 2019 | WORD Christchurch Shifting Points of ViewMarilyn Waring’s new book The Political Years looks at her extraordinary years in parliament. She tells the story of her journey from being elected as a new National Party MP in a conservative rural seat to being publicly decried by the Robert Muldoon for her ‘feminist anti-nuclear stance’ t…

13 September 2019 | WORD Christchurch Shifting Points of ViewFrom Billy T. James to Rose Matafeo, Fred Dagg to Flight of the Conchords, New Zealanders have made each other laugh in ways distinctive to these islands. The recent documentary series Funny As is a loving and hilarious tribute to the people who have made the scene what it is today. Join …

31 August 2019 | WORD Christchurch Shifting Points of ViewSimon Winchester, the distinguished and bestselling author of Pacific, The Map That Changed the World and The Surgeon of Crowthorne among many others, knows how to tell a good story. His latest book, Exactly: How Precision Engineers Created the Modern World is a magnificent history of the pi…

31 August 2019 | WORD Christchurch Shifting Points of ViewHow can we see where we’re going, if we don’t know where we’ve been? In his recent Michael King Memorial Lecture, historian Vincent O’Malley stressed the importance of teaching the bloody story of the New Zealand Wars in our schools, to understand today’s society, and recently gave historica…

In Dead People I Have Known, the legendary New Zealand musician Shayne Carter tells the story of a life in music, taking us deep behind the scenes and songs of his riotous teenage bands Bored Games and the Doublehappys, his best-known bands Straitjacket Fits and Dimmer. Carter appears live in conversation with WORD Programme Director Rachael King a…

Grab a drink from the bar and head into the Heartland Chamber to warm up for the evening ahead. Five writers who really know how to take a page to the stage are: poet and stand-up comedian Ray Shipley as your MC; Erik Kennedy, with his newly launched collection, There’s No Place Like the Internet in Springtime; Megan Dunn, with the brilliant memoir…

Join two writers whose innate sense of curiosity produces insightful works of fiction and essay. Paula Morris’s accolades include the New Zealand Post Book Award for her novel, Rangatira, and her latest book, False River, gathers a bouquet of internationally acclaimed short stories and essays. Tina Makereti’s first book Where the R?kohu Bone Sings …

When the Guardian described Hollie McNish’s award-winning ‘poetic memoir’ Nobody Told Me as ‘diary entries, poems jotted in the dead of night and during nap-times, breathless musings on breastfeeding, sex after giving birth, and the state of the world’, it could have just as easily been describing The Spinoff Parents editor Emily Writes’ Rants in t…

In turbulent times, in a fractured society, fiction can provide comfort and escape. But it can also fulfil another role. It can shake us out of our complacency, make us think, push us to question the status quo, and open a window onto people and societies different from our own. Recent Ockham award-winner Pip Adam, and Rajorshi Chakraborti, who bot…

Few write with as much passion and fascination about the sea as British author Philip Hoare, who swims in the ocean every day, regardless of the season. His hugely acclaimed Leviathan, or the Whale won the Samuel Johnson Prize and introduced us to Hoare’s eclectic style of biography, literary criticism, social history and nature writing, which carr…

In 2003, Robin Robertson challenged some of the world’s finest writers to open up and share their stories of embarrassment for the collection, Mortification: Writers’ Stories of their Public Shame. The result was both horrifying and hilarious.We gave four New Zealand writers, Jarrod Gilbert, Paula Morris, Steve Braunias and Megan Dunn, the same cha…

Spend an hour with one of New Zealand’s favourite figures as he discusses with Michele A’Court his best-selling memoir, Drawn Out. Tom Scott is a political commentator and cartoonist, satirist, scriptwriter, playwright, raconteur and funny man. Famously banned from the Press Gallery by Rob Muldoon, he’s observed David Lange, Mike Moore and Helen Cl…

Lloyd Jones is one of New Zealand’s most internationally successful contemporary writers, perhaps best known for the Booker Prize-shortlisted Mister Pip and his lyrical take on the All Blacks’ 1905 international tour, The Book of Fame. Constantly pushing boundaries, and never one to shy away from difficult subjects, he is back with his first novel …

Hard Brexit? Soft Brexit? Brexit of champions or Brexit of losers? We hope that Scottish crime writer and regular BBC presenter, Denise Mina and former Islamist radical turned anti-extremist Ed Husain can explain to chair, columnist David Slack, and us why more than half of British voters opted to quit the European Union in 2016 and whether it was …

The judges of the 2018 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards described Driving to Treblinka as ‘not just a beautifully written book, but an important book, too’ and gave it two non-fiction prizes. Readers know Diana Wichtel as a Listener journalist whose TV reviews and interviews are a consistent highlight of the magazine. Driving to Treblinka is a compas…

Supported by the British Council, Creative Scotland and Bloody ScotlandA favourite at literary festivals the world over for her engaging and entertaining conversation, acclaimed and best-selling Glasgow-born author Denise Mina is a must-see for fiction fans of all stripes. Gripping, gritty and superbly written crime novels are her signature, but sh…

1 September 2018 | WORD Christchurch FestivalPresented by Te R?nanga o Ng?i TahuT?ngata Ng?i Tahu: People of Ng?i Tahu, a book celebrating the rich and diverse lives of 50 Ng?i Tahu people, was published by Te R?nanga o Ng?i Tahu and Bridget Williams Books in 2017. Edited by Helen Brown (Ng?i Tahu) and Takerei Norton (Ng?i Tahu) from the Ng?i Tahu …