Note that episode starts at 4:55

The Auckland Writers Festival 13-week WINTER SERIES streamed live and free every Sunday morning from 3 May - 26 July 2020.

Episode Three features:

BECKY MANAWATU (Aotearoa New Zealand) Becky Manawatu (Ngāi Tahu) is the winner of both the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction and the Best First Book Award Fiction at the 2020 Ockham NZ Book Awards with her debut novel Auē. The judges wrote, “Auē is a mere pounamu: raw life polished to a sheen that’s beautiful and warm but at the same time a blade with a keen edge". A journalist and writer, Becky works as a reporter for The News in Westport. Her story ‘Abalone’ was longlisted for the 2018 Commonwealth Short Story Prize.

ROBERT MACFARLANE (England) Writer Robert Macfarlane is best known for his books on landscape, nature, place, people and language. Described by The Wall Street Journal as “the great nature writer, and nature poet, of this generation,” his many books include the award-winning Landmarks, The Old Ways, and The Lost Words, with several adapted for TV by the BBC. A Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, in 2017 he received The EM Forster Award for Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Underland: A Deep Time Journey is his most recent book.

CHANEL MILLER (United States) 2019 Time Next 100 honoree and literature graduate Chanel Miller (pseudonym Emily Doe) is a writer and artist. Her New York Times bestselling and critically acclaimed memoir, Know My Name sparked a nation-wide discussion in the US about the treatment of sexual assault survivors by both colleges and the court system. It was listed as a 2019 notable book by New York Times Book Review, Time and the Washington Post, and won best memoir in that year's National Book Critics Circle Awards.

HOST: PAULA MORRIS (Aotearoa New Zealand) Paula Morris (Ngāti Wai, Ngāti Whātua) is an award-winning fiction writer and essayist. The 2019 Katherine Mansfield Menton Fellow, she teaches creative writing at The University of Auckland, sits on the Māori Literature Trust and is the founder of the Academy of NZ Literature.

This series provides an opportunity to champion New Zealand and international books that were to feature at our now-cancelled May Festival, we encourage you to support writers and NZ publishers and booksellers and the featured books can be purchased here.

The Festival thanks its presentation partner Auckland Live, as well as Copyright Licensing New Zealand and all our generous sponsors, funders, patrons and friends whose support has enabled us to continue our work during these extraordinary times.