The Festival’s Gala Night theme is True Stories Told Live: Truth and Lies. Eight writers deliver a seven-minute true story, propless and scriptless. Broadcaster Carol Hirschfeld keeps Nigerian storyteller Inua Ellams, Yasmine El Rashidi, kiwi photographer Marti Friedlander, Canadian Lawrence Hill, A.M. Homes, Sarah-Kate Lynch, Alexander McCall Smith and Irvine Welsh in line. Thursday 15 May from 7.00pm in the ASB Theatre, Aotea Centre.
Children are creatively catered for with the festival’s first free Family Day on Sunday 18 May. Presenters for the 30-minute events include comic duo The UK’s Etherington Brothers, illustrator Paul Beavis, Jamaican/English storyteller Jan Blake, poet Paula Green and Storylines Much-Loved Award winner Jenny Hessell.
The Festival Debate returns following its hugely popular launch in 2013. Arguing that Privacy is an Outdated Concept will be Jim Al-Khalili, Dutch historian Frank Dikotter, kiwi privacy expert Bob Stevens and Sandi Toksvig, chaired by journalist Guyon Espiner.
Celebrated musician, Tim Finn performs White Cloud a potent mix of story and song developed with playwright Ken Duncam and filmmaker Sue Healey on Saturday May 17th at 8.30pm in the Limelight Room.
In the same venue you can sit back, relax and listen to Robert Schumann’s Fantasie in C major while Scottish writer Janice Galloway reads from Clara, her enthralling novel depicting the troubled musical genius’ wife.
The Auckland Writers Festival’s 2014 Honoured Writer is Patricia Grace. Celebrate her powerful, gentle and eloquent lifetime of writing with her at 5.30pm on Sunday 18 May in the ASB Theatre. Under 18s enjoy free entry.
Be one of only 30 people to take a Midnight Run through Auckland city with storyteller extraordinaire Inua Ellams. Hugely successful in Barcelona, Milan, Florence and London, participants eat, play games, write poems and generally ham-up large on tour, pre-planned by Ellams and his creative team. Friday May 16 from 6pm. Starting point to be confirmed.
English actor/playwright Rebecca Vaughan brings 13 Jane Austen heroines to life in a solo show that will have you heading to the bookstore for a copy of Emma. Austen’s Women plays twice on Saturday 17 May – 11.15 and 2.45pm at the Herald Theatre.
Enjoy lunch at The Langham while listening to British adventurer and writer Huw Lewis- Jones tell tales of risking life and limb in some of the most far-flung places on earth; most recently the Arctic and Antarctica. Thursday 15 May at noon.
Sir Ray Avery delivers this year’s Michael King Memorial Lecture on Sunday 18 May. Titled The Power of Us, the speech marks the 10th anniversary of the great kiwi historian’s death and explores what defines New Zealanders in 2014, 100 years on from the Great War.
Passionate writers deliver their views from their soap-boxes in a new, free Festival series Speakers’ Corner. Hear Geoff Simmons claim we’re eating ourselves stupid, as well as Tracey Barnett on New Zealand’s attitude to refugees, Rebecca Macfie on our culture of corporate negligence and Marie Leadbeater on why our nuclear energy stance is good for the country and the world.
Tickets go on sale at 9am on Thursday 20 March. Find out how to BOOK TICKETS.