2008 Auckland Writers & Readers Festival

Talking Up A Storm At The 2008 Auckland Writers & Readers Festival

Thousands are still talking about the success of last year’s Auckland Writers & Readers Festival. Festival organizers are delighted to announce yet another exceptional list of guests confi rmed for the 2008 Auckland Writers & Readers Festival in May.

Over 70 writers from around the country and 19 international guests from around the world will converge on stage at the Aotea Centre from Wednesday 14 May to Sunday 18 May 2008. Stepping onto the Auckland stage in May: Man Booker Prize winners Anne Enright (The Gathering) and JM Coetzee ( Diary of a Bad Year ), Italian terrorism and economics Year), expert Loretta Napoleoni (Terror Incorporated, Insurgent Iraq, Rogue Economics), food guru Michael Pollan ( In Defence of Food and The Omnivore’s Dilemma), Dominican- American Junot Diaz (The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao), hot-shot Lonely Planet scribe Thomas Kohnstamm ( Do Travel Writers Go To Hell? ), French writer Philippe Claudel (Grey Souls), from Australia Luke Davies (author of cult bestseller Candy), Gold Candy

Dagger winning crime fi ction writer Peter Temple (The Broken Shore) and Derek Hansen ( Remember Me ), Canadians Ryan Knighton (Cockeyed) and Cockeyed Heather O’Neill ( Lullabies for Little Criminals), Scottish poet and novelist John Burnside, British writers Sarah Hall (The Carhullan Army, Haweswater and Electric Michelangelo), ‘the most important living philosopher’ John Gray ( Black Mass: Apocalyptic religion and the death of utopia and Straw Dogs), crime writer Mo Hayder ( Ritual, Pig Island ), eminent biographer Island), Hermione Lee ( Edith Wharton ), historian and novelist Simon Montefi ore (Sashenka, Young Stalin), and one of Granta’s ‘Best Young British Novelists’ Peter Ho Davies (The Welsh Girl). Girl Local writers include James McNeish, Duncan Sarkies, Shonagh Koea, Tusiata Avia, Lloyd Spencer Davis, Bernard Beckett, Kapka Kassabova, Sarah Laing, Laurence Fearnley, James Brown, Fiona Farrell, Roger Hall, James Griffi n, George Gibbs, Karlo Mila, Carl Nixon, Louise Wareham Leonard, Joe Bennett, Steve Braunias, Fiona Kidman and many, many more.

Over 60 events, over 5 days – a veritable feast of solo sessions, zesty panel discussions and performance poetry - will feature international and New Zealand writers and commentators exploring a raft of ideas in fi ction, poetry, songwriting, fi lm, crime, current affairs, publishing, magazines, plays, history, food, biography, art, comedy, science, technology, television, terrorism, Auckland, memoir, travel, shipwrecks, pavlovas, relationships and philosophy.

The festival is made possible with the support of our sponsors and major funders: the ASB Community Trust, Creative New Zealand and the Lion Foundation; Gold Sponsor The New Zealand Listener; Silver Sponsors Auckland City, Crowne Plaza Auckland, Delmaine Fine Foods, THE EDGE® and The New Zealand Herald; and Bronze Sponsors Hachette Livre, HarperCollins Publishers, McGovern Online, Ngatarawa Wines, Penguin Books and Random House.

ENDS

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