Win tickets to join the crowd at this year’s Auckland Writers Festival. Email us to win a double pass to one of three sessions. (Photo: Auckland Writers Festival 2024)
We have three double passes to give away to kaupapa Māori and Pasifika sessions at the Auckland Writers Festival, for this Friday and Saturday, at the Aotea Centre.
If you’d like to go into the draw, just email us at editor@e-tangata.co.nz with the name of the session you’d like to attend. We’ll draw the winners on Tuesday, May 13.
Which session would you like to attend?
- Intersections Across the Moana: Storytellers and Their Villages Friday 16 May 1pm – 2pm
From left, MahMah Timoteo, Nathan Rew and Marina Alefosio.
Zech Soakai in conversation with MahMah Timoteo, Nathan Rew and Marina Alefosio.
Writers from the Moana often traverse genre, audience, discipline and institutional restrictions as they work to accurately represent the communities they’re part of, and celebrate the villages they work within.
Join storytellers Dr MahMah Timoteo (Tohoa Tetini), Dr Nathan Rew, and Marina Alefosio in conversation with festival guest curator Zech Soakai, as they discuss the possibilities, challenges and rewards of working in, with, by, and for their communities, both in the stories they share and the tales they write.
- Books of Mana Friday 16 May 4pm – 5pm
From left, Angella Wanhalla, Jacinta Ruru and Jeanette Wikaira
Miriama Kamo in conversation with Angella Wanhalla, Jacinta Ruru and Jeanette Wikaira.
“Māori are writers, thinkers and intellectuals. We always have been,” write the editors of Books of Mana. “For generations they recorded their knowledge through karanga, whaikōrero, mōteatea, karakia, purakau, waiata and whakatauki.”
Books of Mana builds on the work of editors Jacinta Ruru (Raukawa, Ngāti Ranginui), Angela Wanhalla (Kāi Tahu, Kāti Māmoe) and Jeanette Wikaira (Ngāti Pukenga, Ngāti Tamaterā, Ngāpuhi), who curated Te Takarangi, a selected list of Māori-authored non-fiction books published since 1815 in partnership with Ngā Pae o te Māramatanga and the Royal Society Te Apārangi.
It reveals the central place of more than 200 years of print literacy within te ao Māori and vividly conveys how books are taonga, handed down through generations.
The editors join Miriama Kamo (Ngāi Tahu, Ngāti Mutunga) to discuss this important work and reflect on two centuries of Māori writing that has enriched lives and helped foster understanding of Māori experience, both at home and internationally.
- Let the dead speak, kia kōrero te hunga mate Saturday 17 May 1pm – 2pm
From left, Whiti Hereaka, Tim Worrall, and Ariana Tikao
Hirini Kaa in conversation with Whiti Hereaka, Tim Worrall, and Ariana Tikao.
Writing about ancestors or other figures from our pasts necessitates a collision between history and imagination. How much dramatic licence can the creator have — be they novelist, historian, poet, musician or filmmaker — in depicting events they weren’t present at, in imagining conversations they never heard, in evoking the thoughts and emotions of those they never met?
Historian Hirini Kaa (Ngāti Porou, Ngāti Kahungunu, Rongowhakaata) meets a dynamic range of creatives to discuss how they’ve navigated these very questions in their work: Whiti Hereaka (Ngāti Tūwharetoa, Te Arawa), winner of the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction for Kurangaituku. Tim Worrall (Ngāi Tūhoe), filmmaker and writer of the 2024 film Ka Whawhai Tonu — Struggle Without End, set during the New Zealand Wars. And Ariana Tikao (Kāi Tahu), singer, poet, musician and author.
Send us an email at editor@e-tangata.co.nz with the session you’d like to attend. The winners will be notified on Tuesday, May 13.
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