World-Renowned Surgeon And Writer Atul Gawande

Thursday 5 March 2015

NEWS RELEASE – FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

World-Renowned Surgeon And Writer Atul Gawande to Feature at Auckland Writers Festival

One of the world’s most respected health science writers, Dr Atul Gawande, is coming to New Zealand as a guest of the 2015 Auckland Writers Festival.

Festival director Anne O’Brien says Dr Gawande is a must-see for anyone with an interest in health, medicine and mortality.

“Atul Gawande is a brilliant mind; a world-leader in how to make our experiences in health care safer and healthier, what it’s like to get old and where our ideas about death have gone wrong.”

Dr Gawande will appear in two major public events at the Festival: in conversation with Dr David Galler, an intensive care specialist at Middlemore Hospital, on Saturday 16 May, 5.30pm, and in a panel conversation on the future on Sunday 17 May, 3pm, both in The Aotea Centre’s ASB Theatre. Tickets for these events, priced from just $15, go on public sale 9am, 19 March fromwww.ticketmaster.co.nz.

Dr Gawande gave last year’s prestigious Reith Lectures for the BBC. His bestselling books includeThe Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right, Better and, most recently, Being Mortal: Illness, Medicine, and What Matters in the End.

While in New Zealand, Dr Gawande will also headline a day-long forum for the health and disability and aged-care sectors in Wellington on Monday 18 May.

The forum is being presented by the Health Quality & Safety Commission, whose chair, Professor Alan Merry, says: “Dr Gawande encourages the kind of fresh thinking the Commission supports here in New Zealand, so we are delighted to be able to host this event.”

To book a place at the forum, visit www.hqsc.govt.nz/atul-gawande or email info@hqsc.govt.nz.

Dr Gawande travels from the US, where he is a surgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and professor in both the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Harvard School of Public Health and the Department of Surgery at Harvard Medical School.

Last year more than 50,000 people flocked to the Auckland Writers Festival - a 45 percent increase in ticket sales compared with 2013 - and many events sold out.

Now in its 15th year, the Auckland Writers Festival plays host to more than 150 writers over five days of ideas, readings, debates, stand-up poetry, literary theatre, children’s writers and free family events.

The 2015 Auckland Writers Festival programme is launched at an invitation-only event at the Auckland Art Gallery on the evening of Tuesday 17 March. A preferential booking period for Festival Patrons and Friends follows with public tickets on sale from 9.00am, Thursday 19 March, from www.ticketmaster.co.nz.

The Auckland Writers Festival warmly thanks its Gold Partners: The University of Auckland, Freemasons Foundation, New Zealand Listener, ASB Community Trust, Creative New Zealand and ATEED; Summerset Group who are supporting Dr Gawande’s conversation event at the Festival; and all our other Silver, Bronze and Supporting Partners.

We are also enormously grateful to our Festival patrons for their enthusiasm and generosity.

ENDS

KEY DATES

12 May Damian Barr’s Literary Salon (Seafarers Club, Britomart)

13 May Auckland Writers Festival Schools Programme (Aotea Centre)

The University of Auckland Festival Debate (Aotea Centre)

14 May Auckland Writers Festival Schools Programme (Aotea Centre)

New Zealand Listener Gala Night (Aotea Centre)

15-17 May Public Festival programme (Aotea Centre, Auckland Art Gallery)

16 May Dr Atul Gawande in conversation with Dr David Galler (ASB Theatre, Aotea Centre, 5.30pm)

17 May FREE Family Day Programme (Herald Theatre)

Dr Atul Gawande in a panel discussion (ASB Theatre, Aotea Centre, 3.00pm)

18 May Dr Atul Gawande forum for health and disability and aged-care sectors presented by the Health Quality & Safety Commission (Visa Platinum Gallery, Te Papa, Wellington, 9.30am–4.30pm, $280, booking essential)

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