It barely seems like a year ago since we started this blog … but it must be, because next week the Auckland Writers and Readers Festival for 2008 kicks off. We launched the blog there last year by bringing you all the literary action of the 2007 festival.
This year we are heading back with an expanded team of contributors to bring you interviews, report backs on sessions, and an idea of all the literary flavours of Auckland.
To whet your appetite, take a look at our interview with festival director Jill Rawnsley, our page on authors at the festival and the Festival’s pages.
As a fan of a good biography, I’m particularly looking forward to the sessions focusing on biographies and memoirs. Simon Sebag Montefiore has explored the life of Young Stalin and Hermione Lee who has written about intriguing characters like Virginia Woolf and Edith Wharton. I’m also keen to hear from Sarah Hall after having been thoroughly captivated by her novel The Carhullan Army.
Other sessions on my must see list: Addicted to the Dark brings together Duncan Sarkies, Luke Davies and Heather O’Neill with Festival creative director Stephanie Johnson chairing the session. “Like any good drug, dark literature makes you laugh and cry, makes you fly and pulls you down”.
History and the Novel chaired by Fiona Kidman: “War and Peace is perhaps the greatest historical novel of all time. Was Hardy also an historical novelist? Why is the term faintly pejorative when these great works aim to eviscerate the past?” Simon Montefiore, Luke Davies and Sarah Hall make up the panel.
