Guest Authors for 2013 Hawke’s Bay Readers and Writer Fest

Guest Authors Announced for 2013 Hawke’s Bay Readers and Writers Festival

For Immediate Release

While New Zealand Book Month events take place around the region and the country throughout March, the organisers of the 2013 Hawke’s Bay Readers and Writers Festival are focussed firmly on June. The biennial event – which was previously known as the Hastings Festival of Writers – takes place on Saturday June 15th and Sunday June 16th, with schools events on Friday June 14th.

The festival widens its reach this year, with events planned over the weekend in Hastings, Havelock North and Napier, and organising trust chair Carla Crosbie from Hastings District Libraries comments that this is a positive step forward for the festival. “This festival has a vibrant history of bringing top writers into the region, and has had fantastic support over the years from the public and from local business. In particular, the role Te Mata Wines played early on really set the event up as a great combination of literature and the Hawke’s Bay lifestyle. So it’s great to now be able to include Napier in the festival, so it truly becomes a Hawke’s Bay event.”

Carla and her fellow trustees have secured an impressive line-up of visiting writers ahead of the festival which will include free events and ticketed, catered sessions. More information on the specific events will be available in coming weeks, however the guest writers can now be confirmed as:

• 2013 New Zealand New Zealander of the Year and prominent historian and biographer, Dame Anne Salmond.

• Lauded food writer (Ladies, a Plate and A Second Helping), biographer (Sir Edmund Hillary: An Extraordinary Life,) and art curator, Alexa Johnson.

• Former TVNZ correspondent to the US, journalist and novelist (Their Faces Were Shining and The Desolation Angel), Tim Wilson.

• Christchurch-based novelist (Magpie Hall and The Sound of Butterflies) and recent children’s book author (Red Rocks), Rachel King.

• Renowned poet (Wild Dogs Under My Skirt and Bloodclot)and performer, Tusiata Avia

These writers will join Napier-based historian and author Peter Wells and local children’s and young adult fiction writers Anna MacKenzie, Adele Broadbent, Aaron Topp and Mary-Anne Scott.

The festival trust is in the process of building a new website, which will be launched by early April and will feature a new-look brand/logo to match the festival’s new name and focus.

ENDS

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