It is here…

We were thrilled to launch the much awaited Programme for the 2025 Dunedin Readers & Writers Festival at the University Book Shop on Wednesday this week!

Our special guest of honour Fiona Farrel said it best, here we share her speech from the evening, waxing lyrical (as per instructions) on the events she is most looking forward to come the weekend of the 17th-19th October…

So.. here we are at this precise point in time and place. 800, 1000 years of story telling, oratory, argument, poetry, song, journalism, books fictional and factual in all their glorious variety, all those words hang here, in the air around us. And here we are, gathered to celebrate them: words. A book festival. I can’t tell you how many festivals I’ve been to since the first, a few women in the library in Palmerston North for this brand new thing, a Women’s Book Festival, back in the 80s when feminism was beginning to gather momentum. Since then, dozens. Here and overseas. Little festivals run by half a dozen local volunteers, huge festivals with competing hordes of writers and all the PR hoopla.

And what I want to say before I say anything else, is that this one promises to be different from any festival I’ve ever attended – and that is because of its base, its kaupapa, the clay floor, the flat place on which the event has been constructed. Thanks to Jen and Kitty, to the board and trustees and a remarkable team of volunteers – again, mostly women – we are about to experience something new, that belongs, body and soul, to this place, to this point in this region’s rich, complex, conflicted, endlessly creative history.

That’s what I wanted to say to begin – but I’ve also been asked to talk – the exact instruction was to ‘wax lyrical’ – about particular sessions in this festival that I wouldn’t want to miss. So I’ll do my best to wax – though I must admit I feel a bit like a rather doubtful jockey, sidling up to offer a hot tip for the 2.30 and should probably be treated with similar caution. You will each have your own hot tips!

So, the festivities begin on Friday evening with a welcome – poetry and boil up! – at Ōtākou to writers arriving from across the motu. Or there is a celebration of 1980s glam: Eden Hoare’s collection of Benson and Hedges Fashion award winners at Toitū and the book that celebrates them. The shoulder pads, the Dallas style big hair. Ah yes – I remember them well. (That disastrous spiral perm…)

Saturday morning, and first thing there’s another choice. Will it be Catherine Chidgey’s vision in The Book of Guilt, of a world where Hitler was killed before he could do too much damage and another tale unfolded? Catherine is an extraordinary writer enjoying a midlife burst of creativity and it’s wonderful to witness. But I’d be torn – wanting also to hear Becky Manawatu and Talia Marshall in conversation with Victor Rodger, who I last heard at the Akaroa festival delivering a terrific talk about his life and writing – and they plan a conversation about their books based around tracks from Fleetwood Mac. Stevie Nix. Go your own way! What more need I say?

Then at 11am, Dazzling Duncan Sarkies talks politics among alpacas and their fanciers. His Stargazer like his earlier novel Two Little Boys, is original, funny and poignant. But up against that is a guided talk at the art gallery about the exhibition of the life of Hori Kerei Taiaroa, and I am trying at the moment to fill in gaps – so many gaps despite the fact that my mother, grand mother and great grand mother were all born here as was I – but still there are these huge gaps in my knowledge of this place and I need to fill them before it’s too late. Different kinds of sessions offer different kinds of interest and pleasure.

That afternoon, another massive three way tussle between hearing a good friend, Apirana Taylor, with whom I shared a most memorable tour up the East Coast years ago – I’d love to hear him reading his recent work, in conversation with Victor Rodger. Or – there is a session in which Wendy Parkins, Tina Makereti and Michelle Elvy discuss truth and fiction with David Eggleton and that’s a really big question, one I would like to hear them debate. Or there’s Slowing the Sun: a session attending to that most pressing of issues – the changes humans are creating in the climate that sustains us, and here it is being addressed by Nadine Hura, and a woman for whom I have such great respect for her strength, wise words and dignity: Metiria Turei Stanton. Climate change in a Māori frame of reference.

Then at 5.30, Tāme Iti takes the stage, to talk about his autobiography Mana: the life of a great activist, a chance – my first chance ever – to hear him speak without the filter of some journalist or documentary maker.

And so to Sunday: sometimes the best things in festivals are the sessions about subjects of which you are completely ignorant. Rugby league would definitely be one for me and it could be why I go to hear Ryan Bodman talking about the history, social relevance and politics of that most working class of games.

 And in the afternoon – well, I remember a book festival in Vancouver where a French Canadian novelist, who had sat silently through a long panel discussion about ideas and process, suddenly burst out with ‘Why does no one ever talk about  BEAUTY! – because that is what we do! We make BEAUTY!’

Well, here there will be talk about beauty – the award winning Toi Te Mana: an indigenous history of Maori Art with Deirdre Brown, Ngarino Ellis and host Jeanette Wikaira. Though it will be competing for my attention with Emma Neale and Lynley Edmeades, two thoughtful and extraordinary poets from this city, talking about their craft. And at 2.30 another superb local writer Laurence Fearnley will join poet and now novelist Louise Wallace to discuss fiction and the environment with Kathryn van Beek and it’s guaranteed to be a good conversation, penetrating and original.

Though there is also the siren call to break out the bonnets for afternoon tea and talk about Jane Austen over at Tūhura.

But at 4pm the choice is clear: brilliant Finance Minister, fervent rugby fan, famous Kings High old boy, one of this city’s greatest notables – now charged with guiding its greatest asset, its revered university, through the tangle of words and ideas that are currently determining what a university could or should be. Grant Robertson will be discussing his memoir, Anything Could Happen. I’m reading it at present – it’s fluent, informative, funny, a companion to Jacinda Ardern’s superb memoir, A Different Kind of Power – they’re side by side over there on the shelf as they should be. I’ve seen him often enough on television, but this will be my first chance to hear him speak. Live and in full colour!

I could mention the poetry readings, the Young Adult programme at the new library in South Dunedin, any one of a dozen other sessions – but I’ve been told to stick to 7 minutes. So those are my picks.

And when it’s all over, I shall go home, buzzy with all those words and an armful of books. And I hope you will too: warmed by the fire that this wonderful committee has lit for us.