A review round-up of Auckland Writers Festival events by Spinoff staffers.<\/p>\n
Book people are the best. Every year the tens of thousands of people from the very young to the very old who fill Aotea Center for the Auckland Writers Festival (AWF) remind me that people not only care about books but they care enough to spend money (or attend one of the many free events) to listen to discussions about them. AWF\u2019s talented, always-smiling and serene artistic director Lyndsey Fineran told the crowd at the festival\u2019s gala night that 2026 has seen the best sales figures in the festival\u2019s history. The book sales across the festival\u2019s three-day, 6,000+ student attendee schools programme were the highest ever, too.<\/p>\n
In a time of political upheaval, declining rates of literacy and AI anxiety, this upward trajectory is extremely encouraging. Being in a venue filled with thousands of stimulated, excited, merry book lovers is a potent pick-me-up. I think it\u2019s time other cities took note of AWF\u2019s astonishing success built over years and years of hard work, reputation-building and honing of systems. Book festivals are going off \u2013 they\u2019re pop-up places where children and adults alike can see the magic of stories unfold in front of their eyes, receive lifelong advice, exercise their own minds and curiosities, participate in robust conversations that expand, educate and challenge. Book festivals build communities, sustain art and celebrate a breadth of stories and perspectives. They\u2019re becoming, like libraries, an essential meeting place \u2013 and if they\u2019re well supported they will only grow in strength as local and global shifts and events inspire an urge to collectivise and gather and talk.<\/p>\n
Hats off to the Auckland Writers Festival team and supporters who pulled off a phenomenal festival \u2013 a highlight not only of Aotearoa\u2019s literary calendar, but of the world\u2019s. \/ books editor Claire Mabey<\/p>\n
Here is a round up of just a few of the events Spinoff staff members attended (we have a male-heavy line-up of reviews here, which is purely accidental):<\/p>\n
Patrick Radden Keefe<\/p>\n
Jack Tame apologised before doing it, but then ploughed ahead and called the esteemed New Yorker journalist and author Patrick Radden Keefe a motherfucker. That would be harsh if it wasn\u2019t for the context.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Tame, interviewing Radden Keefe about his new release London Falling and the outrageously impressive line of books that came before it, said that he had been a longtime fan of Radden Keefe\u2019s written work and so was intrigued when the author launched a podcast, Wind of Change. It was the first time Tame had heard Radden Keefe\u2019s voice, and on finding this brilliant writer also had an incredible voice for podcasting, he thought \u201cthis motherfucker!\u201d<\/p>\n
Patrick Radden Keefe speaking to Jack Tame. (Photo: Claire Mabey)<\/p>\n
Watching Radden Keefe on stage at the Aotea Centre, it was impossible not to feel the same combination of awe and envy Tame described. Here he was talking about uncovering who killed Jean McConville, a mother-of-10 abducted by the IRA in the 1970s. Then onto his part in exposing the Sackler family\u2019s role in the proliferation of addictive pharmaceutical drug Oxycontin. Now let\u2019s discuss how he delved into the CIA\u2019s propaganda machine. You get the picture.<\/p>\n
Still, throughout a 75-minute conversation about this next-level journalism, Radden Keefe managed to be self-deprecating in the most genuine and charming way. A skilled live storyteller (so often those that can spin a yarn on paper cannot do the same in person), he was quick-witted and ready to delve into the darkness and difficulty of his work. How did he convince the parents of a dead teenager to open up to him for his latest book? What did he do when this grieving family banned him from publishing certain facts? How did he say no when one of the world\u2019s most notorious gangsters, El Chapo, wanted him to ghost write his memoir?<\/p>\n
He was generous. He was nuanced. He was an absolute motherfucker. \/ Veronica Schmidt<\/p>\n
Gilbert Enoka in the Schools Programme<\/p>\n
Auckland Writers Festival hosted 6,000 students over three days \u2013 it\u2019s one of the most successful, optimistic and energetic aspects of what is already a successful, optimistic and energetic operation. Kids are so enthusiastic, open-minded, curious and articulate and the AWF team do a phenomenal job of serving them with a rich programme of writers from all corners of the literary world.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I went along to see Gilbert Enoka talk to hundreds of secondary students and had my own mind blown. Enoka is the author of Become Unstoppable which draws on his years of being the high performance sports psychologist who transformed how the All Blacks approach their game. To be honest, I didn\u2019t think his session would hold much for me. How arrogant! How wrong! \u201cAny victory without character is hollow to me,\u201d he said from the stage. I was hooked.<\/p>\n
Gilbert Enoka speaking to secondary school students. (Photo: Claire Mabey)<\/p>\n
In a swift 30-minutes Enoka gave vital life advice. \u201cLiving in the world is a duel between mind and emotion,\u201d he said. \u201cIf your mindset isn\u2019t right you\u2019ll do dumb things when emotions spike.\u201d He went on to talk about his theory of the invisible backpack: everyone is carrying one and inside it are such treasures as self doubt, insecurity, debt, anxiety, fear of failure. All those lovely human conditions that cause pressure. \u201cYou can\u2019t improve on what you don\u2019t talk about,\u201d he advised. I wish I had had access to this kind of conversation when I was a teen. Enoka was generous, wise and deeply earnest: \u201cKnow me, be me, stay me\u201d he proclaimed from the stage. Sounds so simple but as we all know is deeply complex in a roiling, confusing world. I suspect the students lucky enough to hear him will carry his insights and wisdom for the rest of their lives, even if they don\u2019t quite know it yet. \/ Claire Mabey<\/p>\n
Festival Gala Night: Resetting the Compass<\/p>\n
An invitation to take part in the Festival Gala Night must feel like a double-edged sword. If, of all the festival\u2019s authors, you\u2019re one of the eight that gets the call up, you must be an esteemed or upcoming writer. Well done. Now, here\u2019s your prize: a hospital pass.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The opening night gala requires writers to take the stage and pretty much perform. This isn\u2019t the usual fare of the festival \u2013 discussions on process and published work; a reading; a workshop \u2013 the authors are given a topic and asked to speak. It seems a cruel and unusual punishment for people used to working alone and producing art for the page. It\u2019s also hard on the audience.\u00a0<\/p>\n
This year\u2019s theme was \u201cresetting the compass\u201d, and the night\u2019s needle sometimes found its north star, and other times headed south.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
But, look, there were some splendid moments. The Scottish poet Michael Pedersen described himself as a \u201cbig, lanky streak of piss\u201d, T\u0101me Iti was as generous as he was sage, and Witi Ihimaera finished up with a gloriously theatrical bow.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Hats off to Miriama McDowell for hosting with great warmth, and to writers Tayari Jones, Elizabeth Knox, Michael Pedersen, RF Kuang, Yann Martel, Witi Ihimaera, T\u0101me Iti and Dr Lucy Hone for taking on the challenge.<\/p>\n
Is it the right format for a gala? Could be time to reset the compass. \/ Veronica Schmidt<\/p>\n
The gala night writers take a final bow. (Photo: Claire Mabey)
\nYann Martel<\/p>\n
The book Son of Nobody has been sitting on my desk at The Spinoff all week, with lunchtimes devoted to finishing it in time for author Yann Martel\u2019s session. It\u2019s a novel that splices family drama and domestic life with a newly unearthed Trojan epic and the academic analysis it warrants. Greek myths \u201cmarked\u201d him from a young age, Martel told the audience at Kiri Te Kanawa Theatre on Friday evening. The Iliad is, he said, about dysfunctional men who can\u2019t get over their anger, describing the war as nihilistic and \u201ccuriously modern\u201d.<\/p>\n
In discussion with Paula Morris, he spoke of facts and their limitations, the \u201cphenomenon of faith\u201d and how humans are \u201cpost-rational\u201d beings. Life of Pi, his Booker Prize-winning smash hit, was his way of comprehending faith and spiritual thinking. (The Iliad and Odyssey are also faith objects, he explained, like The Bible.) \u201cYou need faith in something.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Martel said he sees stories as a way to \u201cunderstand life\u201d. He writes to answer his own questions. \u201cEvery book of mine has been an attempt to understand something\u201d. Each one is, he said, a quest. \u201cI try to live a better life and be less fearful.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
What he said about books as a participatory medium really resonated (a McLuhanism for those who subscribe to that). Martel said a book happens when you bring your life to it; there\u2019s a collaborative nature to reading fiction.\u00a0 Cerebral, empathetic and warm, I could have listened to him for hours but we only had one.<\/p>\n
He discussed Son of Nobody, Life of Pi and High Mountains of Portugal. It wasn\u2019t until near the end of the hour that the deeply moving Beatrice and Virgil came up. It\u2019s about the Holocaust, something he described as having spores. Any dehumanising thoughts and actions, Martel told us, were spores of holocaustal behaviour. I kept thinking about that long after the talk ended, signing queues finished and everyone went out into the dark night. \/ Emma Gleason<\/p>\n
R. F. Kuang and Josh Silver<\/p>\n
Two rising (arguably already risen) stars of the literary world paired up to tackle the question of ownership and story, as embedded in their novels Yellowface (Kuang) and Fruit Fly (Silver). The prompt of their session \u2013 Who Gets to Tell the Story? \u2013 is compelling and had endless potential for tough discussions about exploitation and appropriation in fiction writing. Unfortunately, it didn\u2019t live up to that potential.<\/p>\n
Chaired comfortably by Victor Rodger, the session rarely touched on the prompt, instead circling more generally around the two authors\u2019 works and largely operating as two separate interviews rather than a panel discussion. Questions about translating gay sex terms and reviewing Virginia Woolf felt particularly far from the course. Despite that, Kuang and Silver offered up food for thought on the importance of artists being able to explore beyond their own lived experience, and Kuang in particular spoke beautifully on the purpose and potential of fiction.<\/p>\n
Near the end of the session, Silver turned to Kuang and revealed that her novel Yellowface served as a very real inspiration for him as a writer. He then made a point to respond to one of her answers directly. They exchanged a small back and forth and the panel finally felt like a discussion. I just wish we as the audience got more of it. \/\u00a0Madeleine Chapman<\/p>\n
Aotea Squre taken over by AWF (Photo: Michelle Porter)
\nIan McEwan<\/p>\n
What better way to end a long week than with a conversation between Ian McEwan and Simon Wilson, two very nice men? Wilson was in front of us at the Kiri Te Kanawa Theatre, while McEwan was beamed in from the UK \u2013 his well-appointed study filled with piles of books.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Like Son of Nobody, parts of What We Can Know take place at a university. Like Yann Martel, McEwan talked about the power of novels, describing them as machines for understanding. \u201cWe\u2019re locked into our subjectivity. Literature is one way of sharing it.\u201d He explained he uses biography, which drives the plot, as a \u201cmetaphor for our groping of the human puzzle\u201d.<\/p>\n
Zooming out to his wider canon, he spoke of Atonement and On Chesil Beach (books I read as a young adult and are overdue a revisit). In both, there are \u201cfault lines in understanding\u201d and \u201cvictims of their time\u201d. McEwan is baffled that people hate Bryony, the narrator of Atonement and cause of its tragedy. \u201cYou\u2019ve got to forgive her.\u201d<\/p>\n