One City, One Book

City of Literature: One City, One Book

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Imagine being a visitor to Dunedin, and as you walk through the city’s public spaces and cafés, and travel on its public transport, everywhere you turn people are engrossed in reading the same novel. 

In 2017, under the Dunedin UNESCO City of Literature banner, Dunedin will run its inaugural One City, One Book programme. 

One City, One Book programmes, which take the idea of a local book group and expand it to cover a whole city, are now run in hundreds of cities across the world every year. 

Dunedin’s One City, One Book programme will be a community-wide reading event that will aim to get as many people as possible in Dunedin reading, and talking about, the same book during a one month period. Being a relatively small city, Dunedin is the perfect size for such an event. 

One City, One Book programmes are now well established in other parts of the world. The first such event was held in Seattle in 1998, and UNESCO cities of literature such as Edinburgh, Dublin, and Iowa City have made such events a highlight of their annual literary calendar. 

Why do it? Dunedin’s One City, One Book programme will aim to promote reading and literacy and to increase the sense of a literary community. It will be a “signature event” for Dunedin as a City of Literature, and will be available to senior high school classes. 

The group planning the programme is presently working on the all-important task of choosing the first book. The next step will be organising a calendar of events that gets people across the city involved.