Issue #876

It started back in 2018 when a group of friends decided that Queenstown needed its own book festival. It was never going to be on the grand scale of the city-based literary festivals, but we knew Queenstown could bring a unique flavour. We felt it was a good opportunity to bust the myth that all we do here is ski year-round, with little time to engage in reading.

Since our first festival in 2019, we’ve continued to reach out to the national (and international) literary community. We’ve brought a huge range of top-notch writers to town. The feedback has been great – of course, from our wonderful Queenstown community whom we already know are great readers and arts fans – but also from the writers, who’ve loved meeting the book-loving community here.

For our fourth festival (11 – 13 November 2022), we’ve invited top novelists, poets, playwrights and non-fiction writers to talk about their work, share stories and lead writing workshops.

Two authors distinguished at this year’s Ockham New Zealand Book Awards will come to Queenstown for the festival.

Wellington writer Whiti Hereaka (our special opening event guest) won the supreme prize for fiction for her epic retelling of Māori mythology Kurangaituku.

Rebecca K Reilly won the best first book of fiction prize for her novel Greta & Valdin, about a brother and sister navigating modern romance and weathering the small storms of their eccentric Māori–Russian–Catalonian family.

Otago-based crime and historical fiction author Paddy Richardson will return to the festival for a second time and the internationally acclaimed Kate de Goldi will talk about her latest book, Eddy Eddy.
There are events with investigative journalist Stephen Davis, who’s penned books on disinformation and UK government cover-ups; Christine Leunens, author of the book that was made into Taika Waititi’s film Jojo Rabbit; and sustainability advocate Ethically Kate with her inspiring new book Better, Bolder, Different.

The festival finishes with a poetry extravaganza. There’ll be a showing of Rail:Lines, a film by performance poets Laura Williamson, Liz Breslin and Annabel Wilson, who biked the Central Otago Rail Trail bringing their fun brand of performance poetry to small town halls along the way. Afterwards, there’s an open mic night hosted by a posse of top poets from Christchurch – it’s a great opportunity to get involved in the performance poetry scene.

I encourage you to jump online and check out our festival programme (it’s on the QT App, Eventfinda and our website) to see the full menu of bookish events. Wherever your literary tastes lie, there’s plenty to get stuck into at this year’s festival. We look forward to seeing you there.

Bethany G. Rogers - Queenstown Writers Festival