Stellar line up for Page & Blackmore Readers and Writers

Stellar line up for Page & Blackmore Readers and Writers

A Booker long-lister, a bio of our most successful novelist and a memoir from the director of Goodbye Pork Pie - writers leap from the page and onto the stage at Page & Blackmore Readers and Writers, part of Nelson Arts Festival (October 14-26).

Programme coordinator Jacquetta Bell says she’s particularly pleased with the line up this year.

“We’ve got Rachel Barrowman with her biography of Maurice Gee, Charlotte Grimshaw with her brilliant political satire of Auckland’s ‘in-crowd’, Geoff Murphy’s memoir and the first novel in ten years from Patricia Grace,” she said. “The icing on the cake is having Anna Smaill, whose first novel, The Chimes, has just made it to the Booker long-list.”

Bell said the programme of 14 sessions would stick with the format that has made Readers and Writers a highlight of the annual arts festival for the past 13 years.

“We start with a Saturday morning session for kids featuring Gavin Bishop’s all-ages memoir Teddy One-Eye, then most of the writers’ sessions are on weekend afternoons. There are two Sunday Thinking Brunches – one on New Zealand’s widening inequality gap and the other on changes in the content and sources of news; and we wrap up on Labour Day Monday with Poetry at Mahana, this year with a double bill, Marty Smith from Hawke’s Bay and Bernadette Hall from Canterbury.”

Bell is confident of entertaining and informative sessions under a raft of competent chair-people, ranging from Radio NZ’s Wallace Chapman who will interview Geoff Murphy, through to local publisher Robbie Burton on stage with satirist and broadcaster David Slack, whose recent book documents the history of the playground game, Bullrush.

Nelson’s award-winning bookshop, Page & Blackmore, has now had sole naming rights sponsorship of Readers and Writers for five of its 13 years. Owner Peter Rigg says the event is part of the mix that ensures the bookshop’s continued success.

“It’s all part of being more than just a place to buy books,” he says. “People value the personal advice we give in the shop and in our newsletter and they love the events we stage – with Readers and Writers as our flagship sponsorship.”

The Nelson Arts Festival is presented by the Nelson City Council. The programme is out, tickets are on sale, and Bell is touting the Readers & Writers’ concession as a major bargain at $90 to all author sessions. More info at nelsonartsfestival.co.nz

ENDS

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