Festival Diary: A star-studded Auckland Writers Fest

For many readers and writers the Auckland Writers Festival is a sparkling event that they look forward to all year. In 2025, this past weekend, floods of people crowded into the Aotea Centre to hear international and local authors speak. We asked several festival goers to give us a rundown of events they attended with Aotearoa’s authors, highlighting their favourite moments.

Festival Gala Night: The Moment I Knew

The festival’s beloved opening night event follows the same format each year. Eight writers are given a topic – this year’s was The Moment I Knew – and eight minutes of time, the Kiri Te Kanawa theatre stage looking out to a full audience of 2100 people, and a microphone. Entertain, awe, effect, break hearts: the writers do all of this, often in the same speech. This year, with the event emcee'd by Miriama McDowell, local authors Meg Mason, Ngāhuia te Awekōtuku (Te Arawa, Tūhoe, Ngāpuhi, Waikato) and Zech Soakai performed alongside 5 international superstars (Colm Tóibín, Harriet Walter, David Nicholls, Stan Grant and Lemn Sissay). Meg Mason, author of the phenomenally popular Sorrow and Bliss, was up first. Speaking on a moment in the wings at last year’s AWF, she kept the audience in swathes of laughter, recounting the conversation she had with the stage manager, a friend of hers from her hometown, and Ann Patchett. The moment of connection helped her come back to her draft book in progress and write fluidly again. Zech Soakai performed spoken word, musing on fatherhood and the moment when he realised he had become his father. Ngāhuia te Awekōtuku was vulnerable with a hint of cheekiness as she recounted her moment, how she knew she didn’t want to have the adornments her cousins spent so much time on, rather that she wanted to be with a woman.

The night was concluded by Colm Tóibín, who had the audience in stitches with a story of being an altar boy: communion, the blood and body of Christ, the wafer, placing it on the tongues of the congregation, the differences in the tongues and throats of every person, the realisation that every person would also be different… elsewhere.

A Big Night Out for Little Bookworms

Friday night and it’s an early start for a younger audience. Even before host Kura Forrester walks out onto the Herald Theatre stage, everyone is having a good time. Throughout, there is a fun, theatrical vibe – perhaps because performing is so often part of the work of being a writer for kids.

Steph Matuku (Migration) is up first, taking suggestions for the story she’s going to write, on stage at her laptop over the rest of the evening. She’s given a main character (Aroha), an item (a time machine watch), a villain (Chad Donaldson) by some enthusiastic participants. Steph sits down and starts to type.

Illustrators Toby Morris (Capsicum, Capsi Go) and Alba Gil Celdrán (17 Kings and 42 Elephants) arrive, donning digital drawing gloves for a five-minute illustration competition. Kura Forrester takes suggestions from the assembled kids, whose imaginations are sharp. They decide the pair should draw an overwhelmed platypus, dressed as a Tasmanian devil-butler. The results are impressive but the kids judge Toby Morris’ picture the winner.

Then, Anders Sparring and Per Gustavsson arrive as their characters the Pinchers. ‘You’re dressed as robbers,’ one kid yells, warning us not to give our things over to the pair for pinching. Next, ten children come to the stage to write a ten word story for the Book Factory, a project set up in Aotea Square and active over the festival weekend.

Gavin Bishop, the Festival’s 2025 Honoured Writer, reads Little Rabbit and the Sea. It’s a warm, calm antidote to the earlier mania, bringing us closer to what, for much of this audience, will soon be bedtime.

And the finale: Steph Matuku’s story. It’s a cracker (Chad Donaldson: boo hiss, he’s dastardly). The audience is awed by the fact she really has written it on stage over the last hour. It’s been an evening of intense imagination – not just from the talented authors and illustrators but from the kids raising hands (and yelling out) to offer ideas. It’s the first time the Festival has held an opening event specifically for children. It won’t be the last. Kirsteen Ure

Ruth Shaw: A Life at the End of the World. Chaired by Elizabeth Easther.

Ruth Shaw’s tenacity and storied life were on full display in her delightful conversation —bookended by tears from both women on stage — with actor and playwright, Elisabeth Easther.

Having collected her first library at age 7, it is no surprise to learn that if you want to know how Ruth’s survived the many ‘rutted roads’ since, all you need do is read her work; reading and writing is how she ‘escaped the harm’. Throughout the session she notes books worth reading (The Monkeywrench Gang by Edward Abbey, How to Walk a Dog by Mike White, and David Attenborough’s forthcoming Ocean), books not worth reading (cowboy stories) and tips for reviving a worn-out copy (a spot of beeswax turpentine on a soft cloth). Her laughter is cheeky and her wisdom open-hearted — it is the kind that comes from knowing the dark. As Elisabeth quietly noted, we are all so glad Ruth is here.

Stacey Clair

The Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction 2025 Winner’s Interview: Damien Wilkins. Chaired by Dr Thom Conroy.

It’s Friday, two days after Damien Wilkins’ big win at the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards 2025, and he looks chipper as he sits down with the convenor of judges Dr Thom Conroy to discuss Delirious. And it’s a session full of quotable, intelligent moments and insight into the book and Wilkins’ process in writing a novel. This is his fourteenth book, and it took him three years to write, with life happening along the way. He tried to be ‘as honest as I can be.’ The book is about ‘how we don’t experience life in chronological terms. Keeping respect in dementia, not a comedy of failing synapses.’

They discuss the key elements in writing a truly excellent novel, and how even the birds on the beach deserve to be written beautifully. ‘Give everyone the best lines. Even the shag.’ It’s about dignity, the dignity of good language. And the discussion veers into the nature of communication between people have been married for a long time, and how it comes out in gestures instead of words. ‘Care for each other which is not communicated directly.’ Some things are too terrible to talk about. Notes from a Small Island: Hitching and Hiking Through New Zealand. Chaired by Liv Sisson. There was plenty of friendly banter in the conversation between authors Naomi Arnold (Northbound) and Joe Bennett (A Land of Two Halves) as they discussed their respective books with Liv Sisson at the Auckland Writer’s Festival. Both had recently travelled the length of New Zealand, but with very different modes of transport. Naomi Arnold realised her twenty-year ambition to experience the Te Araroa trail. Her book is named after her point of difference in the way she tackled it: heading in the opposite direction from the norm and being Northbound. She acknowledged Geoff and Miriam Chapple, who were sitting in the audience, as the original trail builders and blazers. Geoff’s book, Te Araroa, was the seed to her ambition all those years ago. As she recounted some of the hardships, Joe Bennett teased her a little about her motivations and was incredulous at her choices. His mode of transport was hitchhiking, to create a revised edition of his best-selling book, Land of Two Halves. It was reassuring to hear that the hitchhiking habit is still viable. After a lifetime of putting his thumb out, Bennett said that getting rides had never been easier, though some of that was surely down to lack of competition. While his experience centred on the characters he’d met and his role of instant therapist during anonymous rides, Arnold’s was more of a solitary story. When it was all over, she described having anxiety in busy social situations. The conversation was an entertaining juxtaposition of purpose and outlook, and a reminder of the possibilities of home.

Carolyn Cossey

Poetry and Music

A full house at the Herald Theatre was treated to Poetry and Music - always a festival highlight. The four Ockham New Zealand Book Award for Poetry finalists are paired up with four eminent musicians to perform from their shortlisted books. Emma Neale, this year’s Mary and Peter Biggs Award for Poetry winner, joins forces with Rachel Fuller on cello and Catrin Johnsson, whose soaring vocals brought real presence to the stage. Amber Esau stands in for Robert Sullivan, with Hinekoia Tomlinson’s waiata adding depth and emotion. C.K. Stead’s readings were given elegant musical form by Fuller and Johnsson. Richard von Sturmer brings the drama, with Tom Knowles layering the mood just right. Each collaboration brought something fresh - a rich mix of voices, instruments, and poetry that hit all the right notes. Gill Hughes

The Modern Political Novel with Brannavan Gnanalingam and Duncan Sarkies. Chaired by Anna Rawhiti-Connell.

Brannavan Gnanalingam and Duncan Sarkies were electric in this conversation about the art of writing political fiction. Although I’m still sour about the exclusion of Brannavan’s latest novel The Life and Opinions of Kartik Popat from the 2025 Ockham longlist, I'm sure the session brought more readers to his book, a brilliant satire sparked by controversial US figure Vivek Ramaswamy. ‘Such a loser,’ Brannavan observed at one point, adding that he wrote fast so he didn’t have to live with the character for too long.

Duncan's novel Stargazers only launched this year but has already managed to annoy both the NZ Taxpayers’ Union and Steve Braunias. Digging into the world of alpaca breeders—some of whom hoped his book would expose the industry’s corrupt underbelly—rewarded him (and us) with a uniquely sharp tale of corporate greed that resonates on many levels. Both authors said that they steered away from turning story into soapbox, instead skillfully weaving political themes into compelling characters and throwing in generous doses of humour. Although now that he’s an expert on alpha female alpacas, one person did ask for Duncan’s insights into the women of the coalition government.

Angelique Kasmara

Bringing the Past to Life: Researching Historical Fiction. Chaired by Sonya Wilson.

Catherine Chidgey (The Book of Guilt), Monty Soutar (Kāwai: Tree of Nourishment) and Robbie Arnott (Dusk) discuss the detail, process and why of researching and writing historical fiction. Together, they offer a layered and complete perspective. Soutar is an historian whose fiction makes Aotearoa’s precolonial past feel close. Chidgey, author of some eighteen novels, loves the research. Arnott’s stories are vivid and sensory (a scene in his book Limberlost in which a character skins a rabbit is discussed in depth).

Host Sonya Wilson (Spark Hunter) orchestrates a fluent, fluid conversation. ‘Why historical fiction?,’ she asks. Soutar is motivated by the greater reach fiction offers when it comes to educating New Zealand on its history. There’s a tension there though – novelists need to make things up, and as a historian he’s compelled to stay close to fact. Arnott’s focus is story first. It just so happens that sometimes the story that interests him most takes place in the past. Chidgey says she’s drawn to how we used to live. Historical fiction, she says, is also a way to hold a mirror up to modern issues and horrors.

‘What can you change as a fiction writer dealing with a real past?’ Wilson asks. ‘Are there rules?’ Chidgey wants the detail to be right. In The Book of Guilt her characters watch Jim’ll Fix It (deeply unsettling for readers who know that the real future reveals Jimmy Saville to be a predatory child abuser) and it was important to her that where an episode appears in the book, the date it airs is right – something that took research and emails to the show’s producer. Arnott says his rules are about the reader’s experience. He doesn’t want to jolt readers from the story, questioning accuracy, so he works to get the specifics right. Soutar says he makes up detail where the information isn’t available (his villains too are pure invention – though many other characters are Soutar’s own ancestors). On dialogue, Chidgey says her view is that it should work for modern readers. Historical characters don’t need to sound like they’ve stepped out of Bridgerton.

‘But does history get in the way of intended plot?’ There’s a schism in the panel ranks. ‘No,’ says Soutar. ‘No,’ says Chidgey. ‘Yes,’ says Arnott. It’s satisfying: there’s more than one way to write a skinned rabbit. Kirsteen Ure

Auckland Writers Festival was held in the Aotea Centre May 12-18. You can buy these authors' book in bookstores across Aotearoa.