University talent on show at Writers Festival

The talent and expertise of Waipapa Taumata Rau, University of Auckland staff and alumni are again on display in the Auckland Writers Festival, at the Aotea Centre from 13 to 18 May.

The co-authors of a landmark book on Māori art, Professors Deidre Brown (Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Kahu) and Ngarino Ellis (Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Porou), will join artist and museum curator Nigel Borell on 16 May from 11.30am to 12.30pm in the Waitākere Room to discuss Toi Te Mana, An Indigenous History of Māori Art, using ten of the taonga from the book to guide the discussion.

Toi Te Mana (AUP, 2024) is shortlisted for the Ockham New Zealand Book Award for Illustrated Non-Fiction, and the winners will be announced at a ceremony on Wednesday 14 May from 7pm in the Kiri Te Kanawa Theatre.

Another University of Auckland author shortlisted in this year’s Ockham Awards is Emeritus Professor of English C.K. Stead, one of the country’s most distinguished novelists, literary critics and poets. His latest work, In the Half Light of a Dying Day (AUP 2024), is up for the Mary and Peter Biggs Award for Poetry and has been described as “a late-career masterpiece”.

Talking about Te Tiriti o Waitangi and issues of colonisation and the rights of Indigenous people more broadly, New Zealand historian Professor Aroha Harris (Te Rarawa, Ngāpuhi) will join legal expert Professor Claire Charters (Ngāti Whakaue, Tuwharetoa, Ngāpuhi, Tainui) and leading international lawyer Philippe Sands at an event titled ‘Laws and Legacy: Confronting Colonisation’ on Friday 16 May from 5.30 to 6.30pm in the Hunua Room.

And staying with Treaty talk,  Honorary Associate Professor of Sociology Avril Bell is part of a discussion about what Te Tiriti o Waitangi means for all New Zealanders, and how to honour Te Tiriti as both Tangata Tiriti and as Māori, on Sunday 18 May from 10 to 11am in the Hunua Room. 

Bell, who is the author of Tangata Tiriti: Working with Māori, Honouring the Treaty (AUP, 2024) will join lawyer and campaigner Max Harris and co-founder of Asians for Tino Rangatiratanga, Kirsty Fong, alongside host Shilo Kino (Ngapuhi, Ngati Te Ata, Ngati Maniapoto).

Meanwhile Professor Paul Morris (Ngāti Wai, Ngāti Whātua, Ngāti Manuhiri), notable novelist, short story writer, and essayist, and the convenor of the University’s Master of Creative Writing, will host three festival events.

In ‘Imagined Futures’ on Saturday 17 May (5.30-6.30pm in the Waitākere Room), she will be in conversation with three up-and-coming authors, from Japan (Sayaka Murata), French Polynesia (Titaua Peu) and South Korea (Silvia Park) on their imaginary near-future book projects; which range from sexless married life in Japan to mass migration away from Aotearoa and a Korea where robots live alongside humans in sibling relationships.

Morris continues the Japanese theme on Sunday 18 May from 1pm to 2pm in the Kiri Te Kanawa Theatre, when she’ll again be talking to Sayaka Murata, and also Asako Yuzuki, whose novel Butter, about a female gourmet cook and serial killer and the journalist intent on cracking her case, based on a true story, became a cult bestseller in Japan.

And finally on Sunday 18 May from 7 to 8.15pm, Morris will talk to celebrated Irish novelist, short fiction writer and essayist Colm Tóibín, author of the bestselling Brooklyn (made into a film with Saoirse Ronan), The Master and The Testament of Mary.

Tóibín's latest novel, Long Island, has proved so popular in Ireland that it was named Waterstone’s Irish Book of the Year and one in every 150 people in the country bought a copy. He has also recently completed a tenure as the Laureate for Irish Fiction.

Recent Master of Creative Writing alumnae Rose Carlyle, Saraid de Silva and Rachel Paris, who all have successful novels out, will also be featured at events throughout the festival.

The University’s Faculty of Arts and Education is a silver partner of the Auckland Writers Festival this year.

Read the full programme and book.