Within These Walls: Conversations at Shadbolt House
The Going West Trust is delighted to welcome Dominic Hoey to Shadbolt House for the final event in our Within These Walls series, part of the Going West Festival’s 30-year anniversary programme.
In this intimate late-afternoon conversation, Dominic will reflect on his work—including 1985, longlisted for the 2026 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards—and explore what it means to write from a working-class perspective in Aotearoa.
Date: Sunday 19 April 2026
Place: 35 Arapito Road, South Titirangi
Time: 4.30pm – 6.30pm (approx.)
Ticket price: $35 / $30 (students, seniors, unwaged)
Tickets include refreshments.
Books will be available for purchase.
This is a small, in-person event. Numbers are strictly limited.
Dominic is also running two workshops – one on prose, one on poetry – at Shadbolt House on 18 and 19 April. The Going West Festival website has all the details.
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Dominic Hoey is one of Aotearoa’s most compelling contemporary writers, working across fiction, poetry, and performance. His latest novel, 1985, a bestselling portrait of working-class life in 1980s New Zealand, has been longlisted for the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. His debut novel, Iceland, was also a New Zealand bestseller and longlisted for the Ockhams, while his short story 1986 won the Sunday Star-Times Short Story Awards in 2021. He is also the author of the poetry collection I Thought We’d Be Famous and the novel Poor People with Money. His writing is widely recognised for its clarity of voice, social insight, and attentiveness to class, place, and the pressures shaping everyday life in Aotearoa.
Shadbolt House at 35 Arapito Road, South Titirangi, is the former home of one of Aotearoa’s most celebrated 20th-century writers, Maurice Shadbolt, whose novels and essays played a significant role in New Zealand’s literary culture. Now being restored as a writers’ residence and literary hub, the house is becoming a place for writing, conversation, and the exchange of ideas. Within These Walls events range from discussions of creative practice to wider social and political questions, shaped by the belief that literature does not sit apart from the world it describes.
Contact Tracey Sharp at tracey@goingwestfest.co.nz for more information about what is going on at Shadbolt House.