Dunedin Writers and Readers Festival 2019 by Dunedin Writers and Readers Festival

DUNEDIN WRITERS & READERS FESTIVAL (9-12 May)

   /   
As Aotearoa’s only UNESCO City of Literature, Dunedin has quite the soft spot for the written word and its diverse practitioners.

The team behind the Dunedin Writers & Readers Festival has a target on that excellent soft spot. We like nothing better than to mix bold and brilliant writers and performers from international and New Zealand corners with our own local talent and wrap a festival bow around them.

The fourth Dunedin Writers & Readers Festival is fast galloping towards us (9-12 May) and promises four days of terrific talk across 36 events, with a cast of over 60 participants. We’re thrilled to welcome eight overseas guests to our corner this year: bestselling Irish novelist John Boyne; BAFTA and MOBO award-winning UK hip-hop artist and author Akala; charisma-blessed English writer/performer Rebecca Vaughan (back for a third time, no less); two immensely talented picture book author-illustrators on loan from France, Eric Veillé and Clotilde Perrin; and three of Australia’s brightest minds, novelist Markus Zusak, feminist author Clementine Ford and Australian Children’s Laureate Morris Gleitzman. 

Pair that vibrant lot with a bounty of top-shelf New Zealand talent including the likes of Tina Makereti, Paula Morris, Chris Tse, Cilla McQueen, Scotty and Stacey Morrison, Vincent O’Sullivan, Lizzie Marvelly, Michele A’Court, Majella Cullinane, Ashleigh Young, Gavin Bishop, Toby Morris, David Eggleton, Shayne Carter, Michael Harlow, Barbara Else, Steve Braunias, Philip Temple, Iona Winter, Maxine Alterio, Leah McFall, Liam McIlvanney, Liz Breslin and Tayi Tibble and you’ve got yourself a line-up to tickle most fancies.

Our writers, illustrators and performers promise to serve up a peppy range of topics: murder, feminism, villains and grannies, fake news, race, class, distraction, boydom, the Dunedin Sound, hip-hop, Shakespeare, poetry, off-grid living, te reo Māori, misbehaving costumes, Scarfie flats, mental health, masculinity, humour, comics, Captain Cook’s one-handed cook, the writing process, comics, history’s scent and motherhood.

There are four workshops on offer this time (poetry, creative prose, kids’ writing and drama) and a cracking day of events designed to inspire our city’s secondary school students. We’ve saved some of our best kid-delighting events for the weekend, and have resurrected the Story-Time Train event that was so popular at our first two festivals. We’ve also spread a selection of free, kind-on-the-wallet sessions throughout the programme.

With that sort of literary spice on offer, we know you’ll make super-fast tracks to the ticket counter. Thank you for that. We’ll see you in May.