Day: 19 August 2014

Nic Low: WORD Christchurch Writers and Readers Festival

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WORD Christchurch Writers and Readers Festival kicks off on 27 August. We’ve asked three quick questions of festival guests:

Nic Low – author and artist

Cover of Peace, power, and politicsWhat (or who) are you most looking forward to at WORD Christchurch?

I grew up in Christchurch in the 80s. I have great memories of my parents taking us to Peace Group in a church hall. We’d paint anti-nuclear banners and learn protest songs (accompanied, badly, on a ukulele) and have a damn good time. So what I’m most looking forward to is the People Power session with Nicky Hager and Maire Leadbeater, talking about the history of New Zealand’s nuclear free movement. I live in Australia and travel overseas a fair bit, and I often talk about our nuclear-free status as an example of Why New Zealand Is Awesome. It’s one of the things I’m most proud of about being a kiwi. It’s also one of the reasons why my stories in Arms Race are about mischievous political shenanigans.

What do you think about libraries?

I’m obsessed! As a kid I probably borrowed and read 75% of the books in the kids and YA sections of the Christchurch Public Library. I lived in libraries while doing both undergrad and postgrad. The 11th floor of the UC library is my favourite: having a view of mountains while being surrounded by books remains a lifelong goal. In Melbourne I do my daily writing beneath the State Library of Victoria’s magnificent vaulted dome. And in 2012-2013 I created my own library – hundreds of books packed into six hand-made travelling cases that transform into book cases – and toured them 2000km across India by train. That project was a roving writers festival called The Bookwallah, and you can learn more about it during the opening Pecha Kucha night.

Cover of Arms RaceShare a surprising fact about yourself.

A lot of my ideas for short stories seem to come from … tramping trips. There’s something about being in the mountains, often with my brother Tim, that gets the imagination going.The closing story in Arms Race, ‘The Culler’, came from a mid-winter trip into the Lewis Pass back country. There’d been heavy snow – the Lewis Pass road was snowed in for two weeks – and the beech forest had been shattered. The tracks were impassable with fallen limbs. We spent five or six days wading in the rivers instead, and along the way we stayed in a tiny hand-hewn shelter called Slaty Creek Hut.

The ground outside was a boneyard of deer jaws and teeth. Sitting by the fire, my brother and I got talking about the cullers and hunters who escaped society to live and work from huts like this after WWII. We chatted about the mountain radio service, and imagined what it’d be like living in total frozen isolation, and getting news reports about major world events. What would it be like spending your days hunting among the moonscapes of the Alps, then getting word that the Americans had put a man on the moon? What if you actually met a party of Americans in those mountains, carrying a flag and a movie camera … ?

Now I know how much tramping seems to fire my imagination, my second book is all about the mountains. It’s an imaginative history of the Southern Alps, told through eight crossings of the mountains on foot. It’s called Eight Passes and it’s out with Text in 2016.

Rosetta Allan: WORD Christchurch Writers and Readers Festival

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WORD Christchurch Writers and Readers Festival kicks off on 27 August. We’ve asked three quick questions of festival guests:

Rosetta Allan – poet and novelist

Cover of We need new namesWhat (or who) are you most looking forward to at WORD Christchurch?

 Oh there are too many to list, but I’ll give it a try:

and that’s just a handful of the artists I want to see.
I am going to be a busy, and very happy festival attendee.

What do you think about libraries?

I walk in and out of my local Mt Albert library at least twice a week.

Every time I notice a few things:

  1. The happy staff – and wish I could have their job.
  2. The high occupancy of most available seats, by a multi cultured and age varied populace busy reading or tapping on keyboards.
  3. That lovely shelf that has a selection of books waiting just for me, and the person next in alphabetical line to mine, who must be retired because she reads a LOT of books.
  4. How lucky I feel to be able to access so many amazing books and documentaries from such a happy place, all ordered online and delivered to my neighbourhood, and it’s all free!

Yes, I am particularly fond of libraries, for completely selfish reasons.

Cover of PurgatoryShare a surprising fact about yourself.

I have a rose tattoo.

My husband asked me to marry him two weeks after we met.

I said yes and he had a rose tattooed on his deltoid.

25 years later I had the same, but smaller, rose tattooed on my wrist.

It was my way of saying yes to the next 25 years together.

This month’s special – The 10pm Question by Kate De Goldi – the eBook!

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On Friday 22 August we are having our Community Read 2014 : One book one community with The 10pm Question by Kate De Goldi.

For this month thanks to Allen & Unwin and Wheelers everyone can read the 10PM Question as an eBook at the same time!

10pm Question cover

You can read the 10 pm question as an e-book from our Overdrive collection and Wheelers collection.

10 pm question  is also available as a paper book and an audiobook.

Ken Strongman: WORD Christchurch Writers and Readers Festival

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WORD Christchurch Writers and Readers Festival kicks off on 27 August. We’ve asked three quick questions of festival guests:

Cover of The Wandering MindKen Strongman – Emeritus Professor

What (or who) are you most looking forward to at WORD Christchurch?

I am most looking forward to the fact that the festival is occurring.

What do you think about libraries?

Libraries are an essential part of our society.

Share a surprising fact about yourself.

18 months ago I began what is proving to be a successful column in The Press. It is entitled Over the Hill and appears on alternate Thursdays.

Richard King: WORD Christchurch Writers and Readers Festival

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WORD Christchurch Writers and Readers Festival kicks off on 27 August. We’ve asked three quick questions of festival guests:

Richard King – writer and reviewer

Cover of The Snowden filesWhat (or who) are you most looking forward to at WORD Christchurch?

I’m looking forward to seeing a new city. I haven’t been to Christchurch before — or even to New Zealand — and so I’ll be interested to learn a little about it and to see how its reconstruction is being managed. I’m also looking forward to my events. The first one I’m involved in will be on spying and secrecy and will feature Nicky Hager and Luke Harding — real journalists, not mere commentators like myself. I’m hoping to learn, as well as to contribute.

What do you think about libraries?

I love libraries and always have. At university in Manchester (England) I would often use the Central Reference Library — a wonderful building — and I’ve also used the British Library, for which you need, or used to need, permission. Here in Western Australia I often visit the state library, which is a great place to work. While I like the fact that material is now being loaded onto databases, I worry a bit that in digitising their stock libraries are losing a lot of it. The US novelist Nicholson Baker has written passionately, and at length, about this issue.

Share a surprising fact about yourself.

Well, sticking with libraries … Up to about the age of fourteen or so I didn’t know how libraries worked. I just used to go in, take the books, and leave. No one ever noticed I was doing it, and I always brought the books back. But strange! I’m a bit dense when it comes cards and IDs and the like. If I don’t turn up for my first event it’ll be because I’ve tried to get through Passport Control on my Trans-Perth travelcard.