Auckland Writers and Readers Festival opens in stunning style

New Zealand Listener Gala Night - What the Dickens?


Eight outstanding writers demonstrated their talents last night on the Aotea stage to a packed audience, an audience who were entertained from beginning to end and when the show was over went away delighted into the mild Auckland evening .
Oliver Jeffers, Jesmyn Ward, Eoin Colfer, Anne Kennedy, Roddy Doyle, Kate de Goldi, Lemon Andersen and Geoff Dyer. What a lineup! Talent galore.

The much enjoyed "True Stories Told Live" format developed by the NZ Book Coucil was put to good effect in an hour and a half of live, "true" storytelling, unscripted and unmediated.

Without exception each writer delivered seven minutes of pure entertainment with Oliver Jeffers theme being his "odd parents", (he told me later backstage that he had phoned his Dad in Belfast an hour before the event to check that it was ok to tell this story about him); JesmynWard told of her life-long history of fighting for survival culminating with Hurricane Katrina; Eoin Colfer, who described himself as one of the Irish contingent at the Festival, there were three on stage last night, gave three instances of What the Dickeens instances in his life; Anne Kennedy, the quiet star of the show I thought, told of growing up in Honolulu and in particular of the time when she was 9 years of age and left for two weeks in the care of Mrs.Wilson who lived next door and her two older pot-head brothers; Roddy Doyle talked of the time he spent in A&E at a hospital in Dublin in September 1991 and of the Dickensian scene that played out before him; Kate de Goldi talked of her mother's colourful language and of the What the Dickens situations that arose in the lives of her own children; Lemon Andersen spoke of his troubled youth which included a time in prison and how his Brooklyn community supported him and got him through those years, this was mostly a serious performance about prison, justice and redemption; and finally Geoff Dyer who had the audience in stitches with his rendition of an incompetent university lecturer on the subject of Jackson Pollock. I haven't so much in a long time.

This was a great start to three days of Festival fare packed with writing talent from around New Zealand and around the world. Now I must press on because I need to leave shortly for the Aotea Centre for my first session of the day, An Hour with Witi Ihimaera.
More here on the blog as the Festival progresses.