Foreword: City of Readers

Dunedin is New Zealand’s first and only UNESCO City of Literature.

This prestigious designation recognises the impressive array of New Zealand authors with a Dunedin connection, including James K Baxter, Janet Frame, Hone Tuwhare, Emma Neale, Vanda Symon, Charles Brasch, Sue Wooton and many others. Equally it recognises the creative energy of the city which inspires its writers to write and its readers to immerse themselves in the literary riches about them.

Dunedin is a City of Readers, where each of us can chart our own literary journey, at times amid the crowded city of popular contemporary works, at other times exploring the solitary byways of forgotten or experimental works, but always intersecting with other readers along the way. Dunedin is fortunate in its wealth of bookshops and libraries to sustain the literary traveller. Each journey is uniquely individual, an expression of our loftiest aspirations and our deepest vulnerabilities, but collectively defining Dunedin as a city with a passion to read and to write. Can I encourage you to immerse yourself in the literary abundance of our city, the collections of its libraries, the many literary festivals and events, and be enriched by the pleasure and fulfilment of Dunedin’s literary offering?