Auckland Writers Festival Schools Programme 2019 Proudly supported by Freemasons Foundation
The novel Dawn Raid features the lively 1976 diary of 13-year-old Sofia as she bears witness to the treatment of Pacific Island overstayers during a dark era in this country’s history and is written by debut author Pauline Vaeluaga Smith, winner of the Best First Book Award in the 2018 New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults. Pauline is a lecturer in Pasifika Studies at the University of Otago’s College of Education and the organiser of Invercargill’s annual Polyfest. She will share some of the true stories she gathered up whilst bringing this piece of history to life as a novel, and discuss why the story matters.
