Page 28 - Auckland Writers Festival

co-edited and co-translated by the world’s leading Nabokov scholar, Auckland University’s Brian Boyd, brings together Nabokov’s up to now unpublished rapturous letters to his wife Véra over their lengthy marriage. The collection has been feted by The Times Literary Supplement as “containing some of the most moving passages [Nabokov] would ever write” and heralded by William Boyd as his 2014 Book of The Year for the The Guardian. Excerpts from the letters, read by Michael Hurst, will be interspersed with Boyd’s take on the besotted Nabokov in conversation with Jan Cronin.
80 FREE EVEnT
GREAT READS
SunDAY MAY 17 – 3.00-4.00pM LIMELIGHT ROOM, AOTEA CEnTRE
Consider this your personal-reading- list-session for the year – apart from all the Festival authors of course. Jordan Bass, executive editor at the US publishing house McSweeney’s, and John Freeman, former editor of Granta and editor of the new literary journal Freeman’s, give their favourite reads. Who in the literary firmament is up-and-coming, who continues to produce great work and who must you absolutely read before you die? With Noelle McCarthy in the chair.
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THE AGE OF MAGIC: BEn OkRI
SunDAY MAY 17 – 4.30-5.30pM ASB THEATRE, AOTEA CEnTRE
Not long ago Nigerian poet and novelist Ben Okri caused a stir, writing in the Guardian that black and African writers should “not be expected to write about slavery, poverty or racial injustice. The greatest literature comes not from the heaviest subjects but from freedom of thought.” Okri has written many poetry, essay and short story collections, as well as ten novels including his Booker-winning The Famished Road. His recent novel The Age of Magic is imbued with what Okri dubs “dream logic”, as well as with sensibility and imagination as
he charts the journey of a group of documentary film makers on their way to film a piece on happiness in Arcadia, Greece. He speaks with Paula Morris. Supported by Platinum Patron The James Wallace Arts Trust.
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A GuIDE FOR MODERn LIVInG
SunDAY MAY 17 – 4.30-5.30pM LOWER nzI ROOM, AOTEA CEnTRE
English comedian and classicist Natalie Haynes would rather we not see “Ancient Rome as a toga party to which our invitation went astray.” An Ancient Guide to the Modern Life
is her manifesto for the relevance
of classics to the 21st century. In a similar vein her novel, The Amber Fury, brings teenage and Greek angst together in an Edinburgh classroom. Haynes takes to the stage to give us old tips for modern living. Let’s not forget that it was Cicero who said “one nail drives out another”. In conversation with Iain Sharp.
83 FREE EVEnT
GREAT kIWI CLASSIC: OWLS DO CRY
SunDAY MAY 17 – 4.30-5.30pM uppER nzI ROOM, AOTEA CEnTRE
Following fierce debate and much wrangling, the Great Kiwi Classic for 2015 has been decided. Owls Do Cry was the critically acclaimed first novel of New Zealand’s beloved Janet Frame,
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