Blackball Readers and Writers Festival 2020

I’m very happy to have been invited to take part in the second Blackball Readers and Writers Festival at Queen’s Birthday Weekend.

Below is info about the Festival from Paul Maunder. Check out Paul Maunder’s blog for a lot of very interesting thinking on climate change, just transition and many other things!

As someone who lived for 18 months on the West Coast as a child, I’m especially pleased to be going back to the Coast for this Festival.

The second Blackball Readers and Writers Festival will take place at Queen’s Birthday Weekend, running from midday Saturday 30th May to Sunday evening. This year’s theme is activists, renegades and recluses. It will take place once again in the beautiful setting of the local school.

To begin the festival, biographer, Pat White and editor and environmental writer, David Young will ‘recover’ the work of Greymouth born, Peter Hooper, poet, teacher, novelist, environmentalist and mentor to young writers. Choosing to stay and write on the Coast, he was in some ways, a tragic figure.

After a break, Caroline Selwood will interview Sandra Arnold, whose work includes two novels, a book on parental bereavement, a short fiction collection and her third, recent historical novel, The Ash, the Well and the Bluebell. To conclude the afternoon, Pat White will then read some of his own poems.

After dinner, Paul Maunder’s Waiting for Greta, a remake of the theatre classic, Waiting for Godot will be performed.

Sunday morning, Paddy Richardson will talk with Becky Manawatu, whose first novel, Auē, dealing with ‘kids, gangs and curdled masculinity’, has been very well received. Elspeth Sandys will then speak with David Young about her extensive writing life with a focus on her latest work, A Communist in the Family: Searching for Rewi Alley, a story that combines family memoir, biography, history and travelogue.

After lunch, Paul Maunder will talk with Nicky Hager, NZ’s best known investigative Journalist, whose books have uncovered environmental, political and military skulduggery. How did his work begin? What is the role of the journalist-writer, what is the methodology, what are the ethical issues?

The afternoon will conclude with a panel discussion with two writers, their source material and their motivation, chaired by Kennedy Warne. Tim Jones, whose latest novel is a Cli-Fi book, Where We Land will be joined by Kathleen Gallagher, whose recent novel Inangahua Gold is inspired by local history and environment. The festival will conclude with a dinner at which people can read a letter of importance in their lives, part of the festival’s aim to resurrect the art of the letter. A wide range of accommodation is available in Blackball.