Auckland Writers Festival reveals 2023 program

Auckland Writers Festival has revealed its full 2023 program, featuring over 25 international guests alongside 200 New Zealand writers across 160 events running 16–21 May.

This year’s festival marks the return of international guests to live venues in central Auckland. Headliners include double-Pulitzer Prize winner Colson Whitehead; current T S Eliot Prize winner Anthony Joseph; US author Gabrielle Zevin; Booker Prize winners Eleanor Catton, Bernardine Evaristo and Shehan Karunatilaka; and Vietnam’s most prolific and award-winning writer Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai.

Guest curators Matariki Bennett and Michael Bennett (Māori), Dahlia Malaeulu (Pasifika) and Chris Tse (Asia), have programmed several sessions exploring topics ranging from composing a waiata to ‘yellow peril’ racism and storytelling through tapa, while, for the first time in the festival’s history, Indigenous writers from Canada, Australia and Aotearoa will join in a meaningful exchange about storytelling, language and experiences in the First Nations series.

Artistic curator Bridget van der Zijpp says, ‘It’s beyond exciting to once again be able to bring in a whole range of distinguished international authors to appear live alongside our local talent. After what has been a hard start to the year this is an unmissable chance to think, to laugh, to distract yourself, to engage your brain, to be surprised, to have your borders expanded, to be confronted by the new and to celebrate the familiar.’

To view the full program for this year’s festival, see the AWF website.

Category: Local news