Pulitzer Prize Winner Coming To The New Zealand

16 July 2005

Pulitzer Prize Winner Coming To The New Zealand International Arts Festival

Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Michael Cunningham has confirmed his participation in the New Zealand International Arts Festival as a guest of New Zealand Post Writers and Readers Week 2006.

Author of five novels and a travel book, Cunningham is perhaps best known for his brilliant and critically acclaimed novel The Hours for which he won both the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the PEN/Faulkner Award. Successfully adapted for the big screen in 2002, the film of The Hours garnered nine Oscar nominations and an Academy Award for Nicole Kidman in her role as Virginia Woolf.

Cunningham's newest novel, Specimen Days, was recently praised by the New Zealand Herald for its powerful, unsettling and miraculous qualities.

"The Festival is elated to be able to confirm Michael's participation in our event, particularly given his forced withdrawal in 2002, due to family illness. Michael is a distinguished artist, rightly revered for crafting some of contemporary writing's most luminous prose. He is a star addition in what will be an outstanding literary programme," said Festival artistic director Carla van Zon.

New Zealand Post Writers and Readers Week will take place in the third week of the New Zealand International Arts Festival, from 14-19 March 2006. The event will host up to seventeen international writers, along with some of New Zealand's finest wordsmiths, in a week-long presentation of readings, conversation and discussion focused on literature.

The full list of participating internationals will be announced at the Festival's launch in November, when event concession passes will be available for purchase. Individual event ticket sales will open in February 2006 to coincide with the release of full details of the week-long programme.

ENDS

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