Going West Audio

At the 1997 Going West Festival, author Keri Hulme made a rare public appearance to discuss and read two excerpts from her unpublished novel BAIT, a story of “death and fishing”. Having New Zealand's first and notoriously media shy Booker Prize winner at New Zealand's first literary festival was something our founder Murray Gray had been doggedly pursuing for a number of years. Hulme eventually acquiesced, appearing on the festival stage for a reading from what was to be her second novel, BAIT. In two engaging excerpts, she carries the audience away to a remote part of the country that's home to a shifting lagoon, larger than life characters, mystery and whitebait.  BAIT was never published, but her reading is a tantalising taste of what might have been. Thanks to Bowmore Islay Malt, who sponsored the original session back in 1997; to the executors of Hulme's estate, who gave their generous permission for us to share this recording; and to Huia Press, Hulme's  publisher, for their support in bringing her words to a new audience.

Beloved west Auckland poet Serie Barford was nominated in the NZ Book Awards for Sleeping With Stones, traversing oceans of feeling, expressing the tragic loss of her lover.  Michael Steven's third poetry collection in five years, Night School, won the Kathleen Grattan award. His live delivery of his work embodies judge's David Eggleton's comment: “lucid precision”. On the night, as we recorded these readings live at Going West's Shifted Ground event in April 2022, Michael and Serie held the audience enthralled with every line. We know they'll do the same for you.

Lucy Mackintosh, Richard Shaw and Pita Turei discuss stories of Taranaki and Tāmaki Makaurau, both ancient and personal, with journalist Tania Page.  Lucy's Shifting Grounds: Deep Histories of Tāmaki Makaurau and Richard's The Forgotten Coast both discuss – from their Pākeha perspectives – the deeply contested narratives of Aotearoa, and how histories become rewritten over time. In this engaging, illuminating and at times challenging conversation, they unpack the past with manu kōrero Pita Turei — who brings perspectives grounded in the stories of mana whenua — and Tania Page in the interviewer's chair.

Casting lines out into Moana Pasifika and pulling words back to West Auckland, Tongan, Samoan and Pālagi poet Karlo Mila reads from her book The Goddess Muscle and Fijian poet Daren Kamali performs his poetry and accompanies himself on traditional Fijian musical instruments. These two exceptional performance poets trade poems across the stage of the Glen Eden Playhouse and the imagined waves of Moana Pasifika as part of Going West's 2021 Gala Night, touching on the personal, the cultural and the political. The session is introduced by the evening's MC, Pita Turei.

A deep dive into the life of Robin Hyde, aka Iris Wilkinson, exploring her contribution to New Zealand literature, her travels, motherhood and her life in Auckland, including her relationships, homes, and the time she spent in Whau Lunatic Asylum (later Carrington Hospital and now the Unitec campus). Hyde's story is told by author Paula Morris, with archival photographs curated by Haru Sameshima. In 2020 the two worked together to produce the book Shining Land: Looking for Robin Hyde. We apologise for the slightly distorted audio quality of this item.

From Going West's second year in 1997, master storyteller Maurice Shadbolt, celebrates the near forgotten lives from New Zealand's history, and talks of his path to writing history to life, particularly in the context of his novel The Season of the Jew. Shadbolt, is a major New Zealand writer with an international reputation. He published numerous books and won every major New Zealand literary prize, some multiple times, and sometimes to the chagrin of other writers. His most renowned work is his trilogy on the New Zealand Land Wars. The first book The Season of the Jew, is a semi-fictionalized account of the story of the Māori leader Te Kooti, told from the perspective of one of his pursuers. It explores issues of racism and injustice and is told as a romping read. Shadbolt was one of the few writers of his time to feel at home with the myths, stories, and legends of his own country, and championed bringing those stories to life and to a broad readership. His home in Titirangi, at 35 Arapito Road, where much of his work was written, is soon to become a writers' residence and form part of the West Auckland literary landscape, thanks to the mahi of the Shadbolt House Trust, the Waitakere Local Board, and the Waitakere and Auckland Councils. Tino pai rawa atu!

The magic of weaving poetry and music together is on show in this Going West session from 2017.  Paula Green, poet, anthologist, reviewer and children's author, with her newly minted honours and awards, shares the stage in a charming conversation with poet, short story writer and academic Bill Manhire, and jazz composer and performer Norman Meehan, as they disclose the alchemy of setting poetic text as song. They discuss their latest collaboration, the riddle project, Tell Me My Name, and along the way Bill Manhire reads two of his poems Frolic and I am quiet when I call. This session took place the day after Manhire, Meehan and friends delivered a captivating opening night performance, https://t.co/Kb3PUgKKtX?amp=1 (Small Holes in the Silence )for the Going West audience. Paula Green describes Bill Manhire's poems as ‘music chambers' and when she asks Norman Meehan to describe the words that characterise their collaborative partnership he replies:  “The first word I would use is ‘work'.  I love work... to paraphrase Margaret Mahy, who said stories confer structure upon our lives. I think work confers a kind of structure on our lives, it gives us a still turning-point… So it's wonderful work...  And the other side of it is I suppose, love, or affection… and that permeates everything we do... So I would say ‘work' and ‘love'… for me they are big themes in life really, they're our pole stars.” 

Women in Aotearoa New Zealand. Five leading women meet in the 125th year since the 1893 granting of female suffrage in New Zealand.  Feminists Fiona Kidman, Sandra Coney, Lizzie Marvelly, and Golriz Ghahraman join Carol Hirschfeld to explore the position of women in Aotearoa now. What's led us here, what's changed, what hasn't, and what's still to be done? The session brought together a diverse range of women with a wealth of lived experience. A self-confessed radical feminist and pioneer of the women's rights movement, a literary legend with more than 30 published books, an Iranian born NZ human rights lawyer and Green MP, an award-winning columnist and campaigner for presenting credible information on sex, sexuality and relationships. Together, they  talked with a current affairs maestro on the legacy of female suffrage in New Zealand and what it means to grow up feminist in Aotearoa.  Hirschfeld introduced this 2018 Going West session, in a venue packed to capacity, with the following provocation: “Just a year before Kate Shepphard and her fellow suffragists achieved the vote, the electoral law in New Zealand excluded women from the definition of ‘person'. So, when we cast our minds back, what do you think these suffragists would think about where we're at, and what we're proud of”. The Women Then, Women Now session was inspired by the publication of Women Now: The Legacy of Female Suffrage, which featured essays from Coney, Kidman and Ghahraman; and Marvelley's That F Word: Growing Up Feminist in Aotearoa. This podcast contains a brief but explicit discussion of sexual practices

In 2017, Going West was the first festival to invite award winning journalist Diana Wichtel to talk about her newly published memoir Driving to Treblinka: a long search for a lost father.  It would go on to rave reviews, awards and accolades.  It tells the story of her father Ben Wichtel, a Polish Jew who was rounded up by the Nazis but jumped to safety from a train on the way to the Treblinka death camp. But later in life, now a father and husband, he would simply disappear.  As one reviewer said this is a story that “will make all who read it a better human being”. It is an ode to remembering; to never stop fighting against forgetting. Reviewers declared it the best non-fiction book of the year and won both a 2018 Ockham Award for Non-fiction and the E H. McCormack Best First Book Award for Non-fiction.  At Going West, Diana appeared in conversation with her long-time friend, colleague, and fellow writer Steve Braunias. Steve regards Diana as a writer of genius and considered the book to be something truly exceptional. “Diana knew something of her Dad's story, and not much more as a little girl growing up in Canada. Her Mum was a Kiwi.  The family immigrated to NZ in the 1960s, but Ben stayed behind, and Ben suffered, and Ben became a kind of ghost, alive, then dead, his story barely remembered. That's the thing about life, it just gets on with it, but history has a way of creeping up on you and making demands, and Driving to Treblinka is a record of Diana's journey to the past.  It's profoundly moving... It's beautifully written, it allows for a lot of black comedy, and it's a wonderfully told story, from a writer who is really without parallel in this country.”

Appearing at Going West in 2002, Max Cryer talks about New Zealand's vernacular English and its origins. As he notes, “We live in New Zealand. We speak a language of our own. We think we speak English, but then so do the people in Texas.” An inimitable lover of language and a writer, columnist, linguist, singer, and entertainer, Max takes the audience a wry tour of our New Zealand English dialect. He tells us why we say cuzzie, kindy and mozzie (hypocorism), why our inflection goes up at the end of our sentences (terminal lift), and why we can't pronounce ‘colonisation' correctly (metathesis). In his decades-long career, Max has been a household name in New Zealand as everything from an entertainer to an expert etymologist. His books on words and phrases are best sellers, some in their second editions including in 2020's The Godzone Dictionary of favourite New Zealand words and phrases.

This session from the Going West Festival in 2018 explores creative non-fiction. Award winning novelist, essayist, academic, teacher of creative writing and the founder of the Academy of New Zealand Literature Paula Morris leads a lively discussion on writing true stories, and the demands and possibilities of the essay form and creative non-fiction at a time of upheaval and transformation in the media and publishing landscape.  She describes her fellow panelists as “all distinguished, all opinionated and all very good non-fiction writers”.  Joining her on stage are journalist, writer and editor Simon Wilson, Susanna Andrew of Unity Books, who is an accomplished editor and reviewer, and economics essayist Shamubeel Eaqub, to discuss non-fiction writing and reading in Aotearoa. Paula Morris Award winning novelist, short story writer, essayist, teacher and academic In 2018 she published an essay and short story collection called False River. Simon Wilson Editor of The Journal of Urgent Writing. Award winning journalist, former editor at Metro, former Auckland editor at The Spinoff, Senior Writer at the New Zealand Herald. Susanna Andrew Co-editor with Jolisa Gracewood of Tell You What: Best New Zealand nonfiction. Reader, reviewer, editor (bookseller at Unity Books). Instigator of ‘True Stories Told Live' events at the NZ Book Council, convenor of judges for the non-fiction prize for the NZ Book Awards Shamubeel Eaqub Economist, author and columnist, economics essayist. Writer of three Bridget Williams Books Text series titles: Generation Rent, Economic Futures, Growing Apart: Regional Prosperity in New Zealand, and with AUP co-wrote with Ralph Lattimore, The New Zealand Economy: An Introduction

Sometimes at Going West, things just connect. When writer Sarah Laing found out she was pregnant she bought a bottle of folic acid and a children's book, Maurice Sendak's In the Night Kitchen.  In 2008 Associate Programmer Nicola Strawbridge, met Sarah at the Mt Albert Playgroup. Both were there with their small boys. Nicola was impressed with this freshly minted author, illustrator, and graphic novelist.  Nicola was also aware that the award-winning poet Karlo Mila, who had agreed to be the Going West Festival's Curnow Reader for 2008 also had young children, and a blog called the Night Kitchen. She confessed to working in the Night Kitchen due to relocating and having no daytime child-care.  A light went on for Nicola; these two women could get together to talk about what it meant to be a writer, a creative person, while also parenting small children. Journalist David Larsen, who was home-schooling his children, was the perfect chair. During the session, poet Karlo Mila reads from her award-winning book A Well Written Body (2008): Victory to the People: Nikolasi is born Nine Months No words I am not a Play Centre mother Sarah Laing reads her short story Afterbirth, from her first published book Coming Up Roses (2007).

Sir Bob Harvey is a Westie to the core. He's a successful writer, historian, politician, environmental campaigner, film guy, advertising gun, surf life-saver and co-founder of the Going West Writers Festival.  In this address from the opening of the 2013 Going West Writers Festival, Sir Bob pays homage to the West coast and the role that this landscape, and the books he loves, have played in his extraordinary life, a life given over in large part to the service of his community. If the previous episode of this series celebrated the Bogan Westie stereotypes of the TV show Outrageous Fortune, this episode celebrates all the many other facets of West Auckland.  The former Waitakere City is also home to free thinkers, artists, writers and readers and one of the oldest literary festivals in the country. Sir Bob Harvey, recently described on RNZ by Paula Morris as “the mayor of everything”, has lived all these things as a true Westie renaissance man. Much of the detail from this talk made it into his 2014 biography Wild Westie: the incredible life of Bob Harvey by Hazel Phillips.

In 2009, as part of an afternoon celebrating Waitakere City and West Auckland, Going West guests heard the story of iconic New Zealand television series Outrageous Fortune and the fictional West family of West Auckland.  The multi-award winning creative team of Rachel Lang and James Griffin, along with actor Robyn Malcolm (Cheryl West), were joined in conversation by Auckland Theatre Company founder, actor and director Simon Prast. This session also celebrated the publication of Outrageous Fortune: the West Family Album, a book byhttps://www.fishpond.co.nz/c/Books/a/Lang%2C+Rachel ( Rachel Lang), James https://www.fishpond.co.nz/c/Books/a/Griffin%2C+James (Griffin) and Tim Balme, published by West Auckland publisher Peter Dowling of Oratia Media. Outrageous Fortune was created for Henderson-based South Pacific Pictures and ran on TV3 from 2005 to 2010. It is the longest running drama series made in New Zealand, and one of the few embraced by an Australian audience. It spawned a US and an English version, and even aired in Eastern Europe. Starting in 2015, TV3 screened a spinoff series, Westside. Set in the 1970s and 80s, the series followed the younger years of key characters Ted and Rita West. The final episode played on November 16 2020, bringing to a close the West family television saga.  Both Outrageous Fortune and Westside shamelessly championed New Zealand music, starting with its use of Westie favourite Gutter Black (by Hello Sailor) as its theme music.  Both series also featured buildings and locations across West Auckland, including the brick and tile West family residence in Te Atatu South.

As keynote seeker at the 2007 Going West Festival, Tony Simpson spoke to the festival theme Food for Thought. An award-winning social historian, food critic, writer on; food history, the working class, post-modern scones, 19th century immigration and a political journalist, Simpson's talk reveals the story of colonial cuisine and its impact on New Zealand's food traditions and our cultural identity. He notes that many British farm labourers and their families who immigrated to New Zealand in the late 19th century (and who had eaten a monotonous steerage diet of ‘salt beef' and dried potatoes at sea) had experience of famine.  They had also known full bellies at the annual harvest home feast and had witnessed, if not partaken in, the ‘farmer's ordinary', a hearty midday dinner traditionally served to farmers at the local Inn. This was a meal of thick soup, roast meat, large helpings of veg and potatoes, a sweet pie or pudding with lashings of cream, and followed by cheese.  They had known what it was to be hungry and they were determined not to be, if they could possibly help it in their new home, bringing with them the desire to be self-sustaining domestically through their land holding. This was true even for the urban working class on their now near-mythical ‘Kiwi quarter-acre section', with its home vege garden, fruit trees and chook house. This was a tradition that lasted in New Zealand for a century.  In light of the shifts that Simpson highlights, and with the land limitations of the modern urban apartment dweller, perhaps it's time to lobby local councils for public garden allotments and fruit trees in parks, so the self-sustaining dream can be realised for a new century? For food assistance, or if you would like to donate or volunteer, contact foodbank.co.nz

This session from Going West 2011 is based on an exhibition and subsequent award winning publication Words Between Us -  He Kōrero by Alison Jones and Kuni Kaa Jenkins, which won the 2012 Ngā Kupu Ora Māori Book Awards.  Both the exhibition and the book traced the first Māori conversations on paper from 1769  to 1835. As the authors' wrote, “it is hard to imagine the shock experienced by Māori who first heard written words spoken in the local language. The startling fact about writing was that Pākehā marks could ‘say' Māori words; Pākehā texts could have Māori meaning.” As the speakers note, the first book ever printed in New Zealand was in Māori.  Alison Jones is a professor at Te Puna Wānanga, the School of Māori and Indigenous Education, University of Auckland and was awarded the NZARE McKenzie Award in December 2011 for her significant contribution to educational research. She has worked with Māori scholars and students in the field of education for 25 years and has a fascination with the complexities of Māori and Pākehā educational relationships. She has written a number of books in the area of sociology of education and Māori education. Kuni Jenkins is a professor with Te Whare Wānanga o Awanuiārangi where she teaches and conducts research. She has had a long-term interest in literacy, and her PhD involved archival study of early Māori written documents and the relationships between Māori and Pākehā. She has written a number of books in the area of sociology of education and Māori education. The session is introduced by Rose Yukich, a Going West Trustee and academic at the University of Auckland.

Allen Curnow reads at Going West in 2001, introduced by Glenn Colquhoun who at the time was an emerging poet who had just received his first accolade. Colquhoun describes Curnow as holding within his arm-spans the history of modern New Zealand poetry, with his timeless phrases having entered the New Zealand lexicon, helping to define who we are. This was Allen Curnow's last public performance. In his introduction, Colquhoun eloquently acknowledges Curnow's vital place in New Zealand poetry. He also honours the Going West Festival itself, which has provided a turangawaewae of sorts for both poets.  Colquhoun reads the Curnow poem ‘Wild Iron' and Curnow reads two poems from what was his latest and last publication The Bells of Saint Babel's: Poems 1997–2001. It would go on to win the 2001 Montana Book Award for Poetry.  This was to be Allen Curnow's last public performance. A giant of our literary landscape, he died a week after this session on the 23rd of September 2001. In acknowledgement of Allen Curnow, Going West named our annual festival opening night poetry reading in his honour. This recording of Wild Iron, Ten Steps to the Sea, and Fantasia and Fugue for Panpipe is published by kind permission of Tim Curnow.

In this pithy and provocative address from Going West 2005, award winning novelist, writer of Tarzan Presley, essayist and renowned museum practitioner Nigel Cox reflects on a New Zealand seen through refreshed eyes. Cox had just spent 5 years away in Berlin, where he and Te Papa colleague Ken Gorbey oversaw the creation of the Jewish Museum. In this pithy and provocative 2005 Going West keynote address, Nigel reflects on New Zealand as he saw it on his return and before he went blind to the things he was noticing, before sameness set in.   He talks of the spooky business of national pride and asks, ‘Have we arrived, New Zealand, at the place we were going to?'  Ten months after this address Nigel Cox died.  Friends at Victoria University noted that his influence on the intellectual life of the nation was immense and that Aotearoa had lost an inspiring, generous, innovative and gifted New Zealander far too early.

Barbara Brookes gives voice to a hidden history we've never read about. In this session from Going West 2016, she shares the story of her ground-breaking book in conversation with Judith Pringle. Her book is the first written narrative account of New Zealand's past from the perspective of the women who lived here.  In relation to the story she set out to tell, Barbara says “so much of New Zealand history is written in terms of wars… but what about all the women who died in childbirth, which they regularly did in the 19th century, and what did it mean to be the mother of 8 children or 10 children… and what did it mean for Māori mothers to lose all their children in the 19th century with disease imported by the Europeans?” A History of New Zealand Women is the story of women who spoke out against government incursion of Māori land, of women who farmed, who painted and wove, sang and wrote. It is a history that places the women of Aotearoa in the 21st century at the United Nations, at the Grammy awards, and the Olympics and in fields as diverse as themselves of women who are shaping the new millennium. Barbara Brookes is Professor of History at Otago University. A History of New Zealand Women was the winner of the Ockham New Zealand Book Award for Best Illustrated Non-Fiction. Judith Pringle is Professor of Organisation Studies and leader of the Gender and Diversity Group Trust at Auckland University of Technology.

At Going West 2005, Television presenter and talk-back host Marcus Lush delivers a witty account of his life-long love affair with rail, his relationship with the train-spotting fraternity, and his enormously popular television series Off the Rails: a Love Story which chronicled his journey along New Zealand's railway lines.  This was a fitting last hurrah for a Going West tradition: a literary steam train journey from Auckland out to Helensville, echoing the train journey in Maurice Gee's Going West that inspired the original festival. Lush spoke at the Grand Hotel in Helensville, at the end of Going West's line.  It also serves as a reminder that Going West has always been about the word in its meaning forms, not just books. The Listener described Off the Rails as ‘a small beautifully shot work of art'. Lush reveals it ‘was the greatest thing I've ever done' and led to an absolute passionate transformation with his love for his country. Lush first rose to prominence on the radio, at the University of Auckland's 95bFM. A high profile radio career followed and, after some early forays into television, he carved out his own niche as the presenter of uniquely New Zealand shows that travelled the country and explored its curious corners. https://www.nzonscreen.com/title/off-the-rails-2004 (Off the Rails) won acclaim and awards including gongs for best director and best information/ lifestyle programme at the 2005 Qantas Screen Awards

In her book The Infinite Game: how to live well together, psychology professor and activist Dr Niki Harré asks us to imagine our world anew. What if we are all part of a different type of game entirely – a game in which playing matters more than winning, where anyone can join at any time, and where rules evolve as new players turn up?  At Going West 2018, Niki was joined on stage by her sister, political activist and former MP Laila Harré. In a provocative and interactive session, the Harrés open a conversation on what we value most deeply, how we keep those values in play and how we engage with the world and with each other. The session included an audience participation section, where everyone present got to join a paper dart game that helped illustrate and inform the conversation. The infinite game project was started byhttp://www.psych.auckland.ac.nz/en/about/our-staff/academic-staff/niki-harre.html ( Niki Harré at the University of Auckland.) The project was inspired by James Carse's bookhttps://www.goodreads.com/book/show/189989.Finite_and_Infinite_Games ( Finite and Infinite Games,) a wonderful work of scholarship and poetry that offers a new metaphor to help understand our time.  The Infinite Game was the winner of the 2019https://www.awct.org.nz/bookawards/2019-winners.asp ( Ashton Wylie Mind, Body & Spirit Literary Award).

Award winning writer Greg McGee, best known for his play Foreskin's Lament, came to Going West in 2015 to talk on writing, rugby, toxic masculinity, female pseudonyms, life in Italy and his novel The Antipodeans - an intergenerational tale of love, blood and betrayal.  For this conversation, he is joined by well-known and well-read journalist David Larsen. McGee, an almost All Black, is known for works that have challenged the social norms of masculine behaviours in New Zealand, most notably his hugely  popular play Foreskin's Lament. First performed in 1981, his dark drama set in a rugby club changing room stripped New Zealand masculinity naked and began the demise of the once popular slur "Whaddarya?” McGee went on to be a successful screenwriter, writing based-on-true story dramatisations and mini-series based on the Erebus disaster and the infamous Lange Government, as well as contributing to several popular New Zealand TV shows including Marlin Bay, Street Legal, and Orange Roughies. He also penned the screenplay for Old Scores, a rugby-based feature film. As a novelist, McGee first wrote under the pseudonym Alix Bosco, winning the prestigious Ngaio Marsh Award for his debut, CUT & RUN. He also wrote All Blacks captain Richie McCaw's 2012 biography, one of the bestselling New Zealand books of the last decade

Working class heroes and poets Serie Barford and Glenn Colquhoun celebrate their working class roots as part of the Going West Oblivion Express as it steams to Helensville Station. Passengers along for the ride were entertained and charmed by this witty pairing of two of New Zealand's finest performance poets. It is pure working class gold, sprinkled with a West Auckland flavour, as they celebrate their whānau, friends, and community with poems about ceramic swans, the knicker factory, bullrush, and bog filled cars, grapevines and the alchemy of Assid Corban's orchids.  Both Barford and Colquhoun are long-time friends of the Going West Writers Festival and have been regular guests throughout the years. Serie Barford is a poet and short fiction writer of European and Polynesian descent, with a background in performance poetry. She has published four poetry collections: Plea to the Spanish Lady (Hard Echo Press, 1985), Glass Canisters (Hard Echo Press, 1989), Tapa Talk (Huia, 2007), and Entangled Islands (Anahera Press, 2015). Her work is also published in multiple journals and anthologies. Glenn Colquhoun is a doctor, and an award-winning poet and children's writer. His first collection The Art of Walking Upright (Steele Roberts, 1999) won the Jessie Mackay Best First Book of Poetry award at the Montana Book Awards (2000). Playing God (Hammersmith Press, 2002), his third collection, won the poetry section of the same awards in 2003, as well as the Readers' Choice Award that year. His latest book Late Love, (Bridget Williams Books, 2016) is an adaptation of a speech given at the APAC health conference in 2013, outlining the relationship in his life between poetry and medicine.

Rewi Alley, a quiet bloke from Canterbury, a dabbler in poetry, a farmer, fireman and soldier went "to go and have a look at China" and ended up becoming the architect of one of the world's greatest labour movements.  In her book A Communist in the Family: Searching for Rewi Alley, Rewi's cousin Elspeth Sandys presents a layered biography of the Kiwi who became a Chinese hero and "the great friend of the people of China". New Zealand has Special Nation Status in China entirely because of Rewi Alley and his work. In conversation with New Zealand Herald investigative reporter Matt Nippert, Sandys recounts her 2017 visit to China to trace her cousin's life there. On that visit, she was told there were more statues of Rewi than Mao Zedong. While she thought it an exaggeration, it certainly seemed possible in China's North West. Intrigued by what he had read about China, Alley left New Zealand in December 1926 to see the Chinese revolution up close. He would stay for 60 years, becoming one of China's best-known and best-loved foreigners. In his first decade there, he worked variously as a fire officer, factory inspector and relief worker, labouring among the Chinese and trying to improve their living and working conditions.  He came to greater prominence during the Japanese invasion of China in 1937, after he was involved in efforts to found the Association of Chinese Industrial Cooperatives (INDUSCO), commonly known by the slogan Alley coined, ‘Gung Ho/Work Together'. Gung Ho aimed to organise small-scale self-supporting cooperatives which created employment for workers, while continuing production to support resistance against the Japanese. In the following decades he worked tirelessly to elevate the lot of the working people of China. Before and after his death in 1987, both the New Zealand and Chinese governments honoured Alley for his work in China and have continued to do so in recent decades, with commemorative events in 1997 and 2007.

150 years on from the original landmark study of New Zealand's birdlife, Buller's Birds were re-imagined and J G Keulemans re-discovered in Geoff Norman Buller's Birds of New Zealand.  This revision and revisiting of Walter Buller's original ornithological study includes exquisitely reproduced water-colours by JG Keulemans, the most renowned ornithological artist of the 19th century.   In this Going West session from 2013, Geoff Norman is joined in entertaining and enlightening conversation by writer, satirist, ornithologist and journalist Steve Bruanias, author of How to Watch a Bird.  Many of the birds reproduced in Norman's book are now extinct; all we have of them are snippets in oral history, scraps of texts, a few feathers and the odd stuffed carcass in a Museum. And, of course, Walter Buller's book. It was incredibly popular, especially from the second edition, due to Keulemans' illustrations - though these were poorly reproduced through the printing process of chromolithography.  Norman's new edition of Buller's Birds of New Zealand includes the complete works of J.G. Keulemans, exquisitely reproduced from the original paintings held in the British Museum and re-discovered by Norman while on a trip to England. Geoff Norman has a background in science and environmental studies, works in the publication business and is a keen tramper.  His Buller's Birds edition published by Te Papa Press has been reprinted three times and won a raft of awards.  His latest book Birdstories: A history of the birds of New Zealand was a finalist in the 2019 Ockham NZ Book Awards. Te Papa Press were able to secure the services of bird lover Stephen Fry to write the foreword for Norman's book. In it, he heaps praise upon the importance of the book and its place in history:  “There can be no finer example of the pinnacle of Victorian cataloguing than the stupendously fine work of Buller and Keulemans in their monumental collaboration… This wondrous, perfectly fashioned masterpiece marks a kind of dividing line between the old New Zealand of slaughter and extinction and the new New Zealand, which is one of the most conservation-minded, eco-aware and environmentally progressive nations on earth.” “I am dizzy with pride at being offered this opportunity to introduce it to you. This precious and beautiful book is a perfect celebration of the precious and beautiful birds of the precious and beautiful islands of Aotearoa.”

This session from 2013 is titled after the first line of Peter Bland's poem The Pond, Here Comes that Childhood Pond Again.  The conversation between poet, writer, actor and playwright Peter Bland and poet, blogger, and anthologist Paula Green traverses the world of childhood, children's poetry and writing with warmth, wit and word-play as they frame the world through a poet's eye. In what is (as noted by Green) a rare opportunity to talk about children's poetry at a book festival, Bland reads from his books The Night Kite and When Gulls Fly High and Green from Flamingo Bendalingo: Poems from the Zoo written in conjunction with 50 school children. Peter Bland moved to Wellington from his native Yorkshire and emerged on the local poetry scene alongside James K Baxter and Louis Johnson, as a member of the Wellington Group. Peter has published three collections of poems for children: The Night Kite, When Gulls Fly High, and in 2018 The Happy Garden. He has also worked as a character actor, winning Best Actor at the 1985 NZ Film Awards for Ian Mune's comedy Came a Hot Friday, and co-founded Downstage Theatre in Wellington. Paula Green is a popular poet, reviewer, NZ Book Award judge and children's writer. She has written a number of poetry collections and edited several anthologies and two popular poetry blogs,https://nzpoetrybox.wordpress.com/author/paulajoygreen/ ( NZ Poetry Box) for children andhttps://nzpoetryshelf.com/ ( NZ Poetry Shelf) for adults.  Paula is active in visiting and touring schools to talk about poetry. Her book Flamingo Bendalingo: Poems from the Zoo was written by the poet and 50 children and is the result of a school poetry outreach project.

Marilyn Waring delivered the Gala Night oratory at the Going West Books and Writers Festival in 2002, speaking to the theme Tracking the Vernacular. Made a Dame Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit in 2020, and a former politician, scholar, feminist, farmer, author, academic, and activist for female human rights and environmental issues delivers, Waring is an exceptional and inspiring New Zealander. Her keynote address is wise, compassionate, insightful and witty as she tracks what is her personal vernacular, a vernacular partly expressed through her writing. The address is part memoir and part love letter to Aotearoa. This appearance was the first time Marilyn Waring had been invited to speak about her writing in New Zealand - but wouldn't be the last.  The 15th woman elected in New Zealand and one of only four women in Parliament at the time, her nine tumultuous years as a National Party MP boiled over in 1984 when she backed the Labour Opposition's nuclear-free policy, prompting then-Prime Minister Robert Muldoon to call a snap election he would lose.  She is best known for her 1988 book If Women Counted, and she obtained a D.Phil in political economy in 1989. Through her research and writing she is known as the principal founder of the discipline of feminist economics. Since 2006, Waring has been a Professor of Public Policy at the Institute of Public Policy at AUT in Auckland, New Zealand, focusing on governance and public policy, political economy, gender analysis, and human rights.    Since 2006, Waring has been a Professor of Public Policy at the Institute of Public Policy at AUT in Auckland, New Zealand, focusing on governance and public policy, political economy, gender analysis, and human rights. She has taken part in international aid work and served as a consultant to UNDP and other international organisations.

In her prizewinning debut novel Where the Rēkohu Bone Sings Tina Makereti confronts the complexities of cultural heritage, the past and the present, and Moriori, Maori and Pakeha identity. The novel is a compelling, powerful and haunting work.   In 2014, Makereti came to Going West to discuss her book live on stage with colleague, scholar and poet Selina Tusitala Marsh - who began the session with a poem penned for Tina and her extraordinary novel.  The session was an insightful, thoughtful and inspiring one, delving into the process behind the writing. Tina Makereti writes essays, novels and short fiction. Her most recent novel is The Imaginary Lives of James Pōneke (longlisted for the Ockham NZ Book Awards Fiction Award, 2019) and optioned by Taika Waititi's Piki Films for development.  Alongside Witi Ihimaera, she is co-editor of Black Marks on the White Page, an anthology celebrating Māori and Pasifika writing. In 2016, her story, Black Milk, won the Commonwealth Writers Short Story Prize, Pacific region. Where the Rēkohu Bone Sings was her first novel and it, won the 2014 Ngā Kupu Ora Aotearoa Māori Book Award for Fiction, also won by Once Upon a Time in Aotearoa.  In 2009, Makereti received the RSNZ Manhire Prize for Creative Science Writing and the Pikihuia Award for Best Short Story in English. She teaches creative writing and Oceanic literatures at Massey University

Roger Shepherd, the founder of iconic Kiwi independent record label Flying Nun, joins lifelong music fan, journalist and TV personality John Campbell to share the story of his life with the independent and much loved music label that has been taking the sounds of Aotearoa New Zealand to the world for nearly 40 years. For a worldwide community of music fans, Flying Nun is one of the most iconic independent record labels from outside the mainstream, defining a particular voice and sound of New Zealand.  In 2016, the label's founder penned his memoir In Love with these Times: My Life with Flying Nun Records. We invited Roger along to Going West for an animated and good-natured discussion with Flying Nun fanboy (and award winning journalist) John Campbell. The session begins with a heartfelt monologue from John, recounting his own discovery and deep love for “the Dunedin Sound”, as Flying Nun's iconic output has often been called. Roger's dry humour, honesty and humility shine through in the course of the conversation as he tells some fascinating tales from the label's formative years. This session was a classic example of Going West at its best. A bright and sunny Titirangi afternoon, a friendly and engaged crowd, two relaxed guests swapping stories and jokes and insights, with the occasional interruption from a feral rooster strutting back and forth past the doors of the Titirangi War Memorial Hall.

Dame Anne Salmond and Moana Maniapoto take to the Going West stage for a kōrero on Salmond's landmark publication Tears of Rangi: Experiments Across Worlds. They discuss the convergence of Te Ao Māori and Western thinking in Aotearoa, helping us to inform our future together. Salmond's book explores how lessons from the past can inform our future, providing us new ways of tackling global challenges. It illuminates how the power of transformative thinking, combining Te Ao Māori and Western world views, can bring about a pioneering approach to living in Aotearoa informed by our bicultural past. In this warm, intelligent and provocative conversation with kindred spirit, musician and documentary filmmaker Moana Maniapoto, Salmond recounts her own life and experiences as a Pākeha academic seeking to better understand and connect to Te Ao Māori.  The book - and this conversation - pose a significant question: can different worlds converge in Aotearoa? It explores the difficulties, challenges and successes since the first contact between Europeans and Māori, and presents ideas on how the two worlds might successfully build a future together.

Science fiction writer Phillip Mann, in conversation with journalist and sci fi fan David Larsen, discusses his writing process, the influence of the New Zealand landscape on his work, and the story of having his extraordinary science fiction novel The Disestablishment of Paradise published. He describes this novel as 'a vindication of love'. Despite 40 years of writing, Mann revealed an astonishing fact to the Going West audience - this was the first time he'd ever been invited to a book festival, his first time sitting at the podium talking about his books in either the UK or New Zealand. In this enlightening conversation, he reveals why that might be. The Disestablishment of Paradise is an epic tale of love and destruction on a strange planet called Paradise. It is concerned with ecological protection and was, in part, written in response to the horror Mann felt about the destruction of the Amazonian rain forests and other ecological disasters such as that in the Gulf of Mexico. He hoped the book would serve as a warning, a wake-up call. In writing it he went back to a technique he had used in other works; a story-teller who can stand aside from the action and comment on it, thus allowing irony and discussion. Mann established the first University Drama Dept at a New Zealand university, worked in the theatre, had a stint in the New China News Agency in China and is a teacher, theatre director and the author of numerous science fiction novels.

In her striking work of creative nonfiction What Lies Beneath, novelist, short story writer, scriptwriter and playwright Elspeth Sandys shares her voyage into memoir and its complex relationship with memory. At Going West in 2015, Sandys was joined in conversation by old friend and Festival founder Murray Gray. Eloquent and humorous, she talks of her search for an emotional truth, uncovering the story of her birth parents, reimagining the past and the power of the landscape. Elspeth declares that she is fascinated by what we forget, and that who we are is largely conditioned by what we forget as much as what we remember. Elspeth Sandys has had many names. Born Frances Hilton James in 1940, she became Elspeth Sandilands Somerville on the occasion of her adoption into the prominent Dunedin Somerville clan at the age of nine months. The circumstances of her birth and adoption, and their impact on her childhood, are the subject of the first volume of her memoir, What Lies Beneath. While Elspeth was happy among the ebullient and welcoming Somerville clan, she had a difficult relationship with her adoptive mother, who was frequently hospitalised with mental health problems. Elspeth's search for her birth parents did not begin until much later in her adult life. What she discovered after an exhaustive search provided answers that were both disturbing and, ultimately, rewarding. What Lies Beneath is a searing, amusing, and never less than gripping tale of a difficult life, beautifully told. The author of nine novels, two collections of short stories, numerous plays and adaptations for the BBC and RNZ and scripts for film and television, in 2006 Elspeth was made an Officer of the NZ Order of Merit for Services to literature.

Acclaimed New Zealand writer Witi Ihimaera launched his memoir Native Son at Going West in 2019. He gave a powerful and emotional reading from the book, with sonic accompaniment by the multi-instrumentalist Kingsley Spargo.  At Going West, we were extremely honoured to host the launch, for what was the second installment of Ihimaera's planned three-part memoir.  To mark the occasion, he read an evocative passage drawing on ancient Māori legend and wrestling with the trauma of his teen years..  Musical polymath Kingsley Spargo provided a rich, multi-layered soundscape to accompany the reading, with diverse techniques on both taonga puoro and orchestral instruments, mixed with innovative use of digital processing. The session was introduced by Harriet Allan from Penguin Random House. Witi Ihimaera is of Te Whānau a Kai, Te Aitanga a Māhaki, Rongowhakaata, Tūhoe, Te Whānau ā Apanui and Ngāti Porou descent. He was the first Māori to publish a novel, Tangi, in 1973. He has subsequently gone on to become one of New Zealand's leading writers. He is passionate about writing Māori stories and creating opportunities for them to be shown not only in print but also in theatre and on film. The first installment of his memoir, Māori Boy, won the 2016 Ockham Award for the best non-fiction work. His play, All Our Sons, won six Wellington theatre awards. He is currently writing the third volume of his memoir.

Dame Fiona Kidman's award winning novel This Mortal Boy, about the life and death of the real life ‘jukebox killer' 18 year old Albert (Paddy) Black, has been described as remarkable and compelling. It is a masterpiece from one of New Zealand's finest writers. In conversation with broadcaster and writer Karyn Hay, she discusses the story of Albert Black and his place in New Zealand's social history.  A prolific writer and national treasure, Kidman has often written about outsiders trying to navigate a conformist society. This Mortal Boy mines this same rich vein, delving into Black's short life and his 1955 murder conviction and execution which sat at the centre of a widespread moral panic. Ultimately, his execution led to a tide of disgust which resulted in the abolition of the death penalty for murder in New Zealand. Dame Fiona Kidman writes novels, short stories, poetry and memoir. She has published more than 30 books, of which several are in translation in other countries. Her novel, All Day at the Movies, won the New Zealand Heritage Prize for Fiction in 2016,  and was long listed for the International Dublin Literary Prize. This Mortal Boy won the 2019 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards Acorn Foundation Fiction Prize, the NZ Booklovers Award, the NZSA Heritage Book Award for Fiction and the Ngaio Marsh Award for Best Crime Novel. Her home is in Wellington. Karyn Hay is an award-winning novelist: her debut novel Emerald Budgies won the NZSA Hubert Church Best First Book Award in 2001. She is a Frank Sargeson Fellow and is currently a literary advisor to the Frank Sargeson Trust. Her last novel The March of the Foxgloves, was a No.1 bestseller on the New Zealand Fiction list.

Journalist, media host and food critic Jesse Mulligan interviews journalist, literary editor and anti-food-snobbery advocate Steve Braunias about his book, The Man Who Ate Lincoln Road.  In 2016, Braunias set himself a challenge: to eat at, and write about, every fast food  outlet on Henderson's Lincoln Road. Once the centre of the West Auckland wine industry, Lincoln Road has changed vertiginously through the decades, mirroring wider social changes across New Zealand. So who served the best food? Who served the worst? Is the rise of fast food a sign of society's fall? What does it all mean? What did Braunias learn, if anything, from his quixotic endeavour? Asked by Mulligan why he did this project [and wrote the book], Braunias described it as “a book about West Auckland…Henderson's the best!” and called the project a “revelation of the goodness of people”. In the course of his dining, and this interview, the author reveals his fondness for the characters he meets along the way and his sadness at the urban homogenisation of Henderson. Braunias describes the idea for the project as “blazingly original”, even though he paid for all the food himself. Steve Braunias works as a journalist and columnist and books editor. He is the author of ten books, including Scene of the Crime,  How to Watch a Bird, and Madmen. Jesse Mulligan hosts the daily afternoon show on RNZ National, before biking up to TV3 where he presents The Project each night at 7pm. He's also a restaurant critic, with a column in the New Zealand Herald's Viva, in which he reviews Auckland's newest restaurants.  Mulligan's  reviews don't often cross over with Steve Braunias's list of eateries on Lincoln Road, although the two men both dined (separately) at one restaurant and came away with very different accounts of the experience.

The poems performed, in order, are: Rain by Hone Tuwhare  Warehouse Curtains by Bill Manhire Wild Iron by Allen Curnow - By kind permission of Tim Curnow Blue Rain by Alistair Campbell - Copyright © the Estate of Alistair Campbell I Met a Man by Janet Frame - By kind permission of the copyright owner The Janet Frame Literary Trust. Buddhist Rain by David Mitchell Yellow Room by David Mitchell 1950s by Bill Manhire Making Baby Float by Norman Meehan Music and poetry are almost always part of the opening night of Going Wets, and this performance from 2017 brought the two together in a remarkable set of spoken and sung poetry and jazz - Small Holes In The Silence. Live on stage in Henderson, Bill Manhire reads a selection of classic New Zealand poems with accompaniment by a jazz ensemble including Norman Meehan on piano, Hannah Griffin on vocals and Blair Latham on saxophone. While the performance takes its name, Small Holes In The Silence, from Hone Tuwhare's beloved poem Rain, Bill Manhire notes that “New Zealand's most famous, most loved, poem, owes itself to Spike Milligan”, as Tuwhare drew inspiration for the line from Milligan's poem There Are Holes In The Sky. -- Permission to set to music the poem I Met a Man from The Goose Bath (2006) by Janet Frame was granted courtesy of the copyright owner The Janet Frame Literary Trust.  The Goose Bath has been reprinted in Storms Will Tell: Selected Poems by Janet Frame (Bloodaxe Books, 2008).

In 1999 historian Michael King updated his earlier book Being Pākehā (1985)  with a new publication - Being Pākehā Now: Reflections and Recollections of a White Native. No one had written anything like it. It was a controversial and ground-breaking publication and like most of King's books, hugely popular. Twenty years on, the conversation started by King is just as relevant today. The session is introduced by Michael King's friend and colleague the pioneering broadcaster Tainui Stephens. Michael King's contribution to the study of NZ Aotearoa history is enormous. He was one of New Zealand's leading historians and biographers. In 2006 he was named one of 100 most important New Zealanders that have ever lived. He published more than 34 books and won a wider range of awards for his books, journalism and television work,  than any other New Zealand writer. His awards include: The Prime Minister's Award for literary achievement, Montana Medal for non-fiction (twice), The MontanaBook Awards Reader' Choice (twice), Review of the Year (twice). He was a Robert Burns Fellow and held the Katherine Mansfield Memorial Fellowship. His last publication, The Penguin History of New Zealand, has sold more than 200,000 copies and is widely considered to be the definitive history of New Zealand. His work in literary biography, particularly Wrestling With the Angel, his Janet Frame book received great critical acclaim. He was a frequent commentator on bicultural relations and helped Pākehā to understand what it is to be Pākehā and to understand, appreciate and value tikanga Māori. At the very pinnacle of his career he and his wife were killed in a car accident.   Michael was a stalwart supporter of Going West appearing in multiple sessions throughout our first decade.   In this session King laments that New Zealand history is not compulsory in schools, something that is only just happening 20 years later. “Michael King's contribution to New Zealand society and culture has been incomparable. In his recording of the history of our country and its people he leaves us all a legacy of lasting worth.”  - William Taylor “Michael King - through his writings, his scholarship and his generous spirit - has made us understand more clearly what it is to be a New Zealander. And ultimately, his life has made us better New Zealanders. We all mourn his passing.”  - Peter Biggs, former Chair of Creative New Zealand.

Going West's Sir Graeme Douglas Orator in 2015 was writer Stephanie Johnson. Addressing the festival theme, Holding the Line, Stephanie delivered a hilarious and biting satire of neoliberalism in New Zealand, donning a wig to take on the parodic character of Amanda Tauiwi Reinhardt Carlton, the ‘National Party Poet Laureate' (Tauiwi is a Māori word for non-Māori, used here by Johnson to poke a stick at well-heeled upper-class conservative white women). The author of 16 books including The Writers' Festival,  six plays and radio dramas and two books of poetry, Stephanie has appeared at Going West many times since the first festival in 1996. She is the winner of multiple awards, fellowships and honours; in 2019 she was made a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Member_of_the_New_Zealand_Order_of_Merit (Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit), for services to literature, as part of the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Birthday_Honours_(New_Zealand) (Queen's Birthday Honours). Stephanie has taught English and creative writing at the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Auckland (University of Auckland). She is also a teaching fellow at the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Waikato (University of Waikato), and co-founded the https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Auckland_Writers%27_Festival&action=edit&redlink=1 (Auckland Writers' Festival) with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Wells_(director) (Peter Wells), and served as creative director and trustee

In 2014 Anne Kennedy was selected as the Going West Books and Writers Festival Curnow Reader, a gala night honour bestowed each year on a poet of prominence.  Anne speaks of what poet Allen Curnow's work means to her as both a reader and a writer, commenting that his work grappled with the particularity of place, of history and imagination.   Appropriately she begins with Curnow's much-loved poem The Loop in Lone Kauri Road and follows with two narrative poems from her book The Darling North, which won the 2013 New Zealand Post Book Award for poetry.   Reading the poem, The Darling North, and Hello Kitty Goodbye Piccadilly, Kennedy's style is lyrical, haunting and masterful. With great eloquence and cadence, she explores themes of love, loss, the land, searching for place and feeling out of place, the past and present, and of ‘here-ness'. It is a magnificently crafted performance by one of New Zealand's finest living poets. Anne's recital of The Loop in Lone Kauri Road by Allen Curnow is released here by kind permission of Tim Curnow, Sydney, the copyright owner of the poem.

This recording is from the second Going West Festival in 1997, but in some ways it is where it all began. What co-founder Murray Grey envisioned, and pitched to fellow founders Naomi McCleary and Bob Harvey, was simple: Maurice Gee reading from his novel Going West, on a train as it travelled west. Gee's novel Going West, which gave the festival its name, was the Goodman Fielder Watties Book Awards winner in 1993 - just one of his astonishing 13 major New Zealand book awards In this archival recording, Gee reads the now-famous passage from early in the book that describes the train ride between Loomis and Auckland. In Gee's work, Loomis is the fictional town modeled on Henderson in every possible way other than in name. His reading for the live crowd, by the very tracks he's describing, gives the passage the same barrelling momentum of the old trains, rattling past familiar Auckland landmarks with their social myths and legends. Maurice Gee remains the patron of the Going West Festival.

With a cannabis reform referendum planned for September 2020, this 2017 session where journalists Colin Hogg and Russell Brown discuss marijuana legalisation is more relevant than ever. Interested in how legalisation was playing out in the USA, Colin Hogg hit the road to see what moral decline had descended upon those parts of America where the drug is now legal.  As high times hit America with laws shifting and attitudes changing, his 2017 book The High Road took readers on an adventure that's one part Hunter S. Thompson and one part Bill Bryson. Riding shotgun to discuss the book at Going West was journalist Russell Brown, who has written extensively about the issues surrounding cannabis law reform. The session includes a Q and A discussion on where legalisation might take New Zealand. Colin Hogg is one of New Zealand's best-known journalists. Hogg grew up in Dunedin and Invercargill where he joined the Southland Times as a cadet reporter. He has written columns about being a man for the New Zealand Woman's Weekly off and on for over 30 years and also worked in television as a writer, producer and occasional presenter and director. The High Road is his ninth book. Russell Brown is a broadcaster, journalist and web publisher. He was the host of Māori Television's Media Take, and before that TVNZ's Media7, and is the founder of the Public Address group blog. He writes regularly about drug policy issues for various publications and was central to breaking the story around predatory meth testing companies whose work resulted in the eviction of many Housing New Zealand tenants. He has been writing and publishing internet content for nearly 25 years.

Business journalist Rod Oram was our Sir Graham Douglas Orator for 2017, and shook off all preconceptions of what he might do by delivering what Metro magazine described as an “impassioned performance” as part of the “opening night of the year”. This piece is highly poetic and jumps backwards and forwards in time, with extensive quotes from diverse characters from the history of Tāmaki Makaurau. Alongside Rod's words, the performance includes a soundscape by Rod's daughter Celeste Oram. Rod draws on the ideas explored in his book Three Cities: Seeking Hope in the Anthropocene for this piece. In that book he looks at the fundamental changes required in politics, economics and technology in order to sustain the human population in its current habitat: planet Earth. Rod Oram has over 40 years' experience as an international business journalist. He has worked for various publications in Europe and North America, including the Financial Times of London. He is a frequent public speaker on business, economics, innovation, creativity and entrepreneurship. Celeste Oram is a composer whose work explores new media and strategies for composition and annotation. Her work has been performed, recorded and broadcast in Aotearoa, Australia, America and Europe.

With ruthless wit and compelling insights gained as a writer and writing teacher, Paula Morris argues that the skilled use of language is a more powerful ally for writers than ideas or feelings. She draws on persuasive examples of technique grounded in human experience.  Paula (Ngāti Wai, Ngāti Whātua) is an acclaimed novelist, memoirist, short story writer and creative writing teacher. An insightful and incisive interviewer, she has been the face of the 2020 Auckland Writers Festival and its COVID-19-mandated shift online. She is a writer of powerful opinion pieces, and the author of the story collection Forbidden Cities (2008); the essay On Coming Home (2015); and seven novels, including Rangatira (2011), fiction winner at both the 2012 New Zealand Post Book Awards and Ngā Kupu Ora Māori Book Awards. Her most recent book is an essay and story collection, False River (2017). Paula teaches creative writing at the University of Auckland and is the founder of the http://www.anzliterature.com (Academy of New Zealand Literature).

Auckland Museum's Dina Jezdic invited four contemporary writers and cultural critics to explore - and respond to - the Museum's documentary heritage collection. Saraid de Silva Cameron, To'asavili Tupiutala, Louise Tu'u and Lucy Zee present their responses which deal with diaspora, distance and culture shocks with both wit and insight.

TŪ is the inspired pairing of two powerful New Zealand artists who share a passion for fusing Māori electronic dub music with a politically conscious edge.  Prior to Going West 2018, TŪ had only been seen by international audiences. Our festival opening night was the first chance to see this remarkable collaboration between Moana Maniapoto and Paddy Free live in Aotearoa. Moana, singer/songwriter and leader of the band Moana & the Tribe, was inducted into the NZ Music Hall of Fame in 2016 and has been internationally acknowledged for her ground-breaking mix of traditional Māori music elements such as haka and poi with dance beats.  Electronic dub producer Paddy Free (Pitch Black and Salmonella Dub) is a pioneer of the New Zealand electronic scene, his reputation built on experimenting with taonga puoro (traditional Māori music instruments), beats and global bass.  TŪ is a unique new collaboration that can only have come from the South Pacific. It slips and slides across genres, rhythmically and sonically compelling, with a message that resonates with the times.

As part of an outstanding opening night, poet Selina Tusitalka Marsh delivered an electric live poetry reading at Going West 2017. That year we were forced to relocate Going West to the former Waitakere Council chambers in Henderson, after lightning caused a fire at our longstanding home in the Titirangi War Memorial Hall.  Then the newly minted Poet Laureate, Selina delivered her own lightning on stage, with a joyous and powerful performance. Honoured with the title of Commonwealth Poet in 2016, she was commissioned to write and perform a poem before the Queen at the Commonwealth Day Observance in Westminster Abbey. She performed that poem for us at Going West - along with other recent work and her witty observations on the British aristocracy and well known New Zealand diplomats.  She also shared her new adventures as poet laureate and her work championing literature and language in schools. - Selina Tusitala Marsh is an award winning Pasifika Poet-Scholar. As Associate Professor in the English Department at the University of Auckland, she teaches New Zealand and Pacific Literature, convenes its largest course in Creative Writing, and supervises poets in its Masters of Creative Writing Programme.  She delivered the prestigious annual NZ Book Council lecture 2016, was made Honorary Literary Fellow in the NZ Society of Authors' annual Waitangi Day Honours 2017, and lives in hope that one day, maybe one day, her sons will write her a poem.

For the very first session at the very first Going West Festival in 1996, it felt appropriate to open with the original language of Aoteroa, te reo Māori, with a session on Māori oral and written literature called Breathing Words. We were very proud to bring three stellar Māori voices to the stage to explore important Māori oral and acoustic traditions through te reo and taonga pūoro, and examine how they inform written literature and what ‘literacy' means in the context of Aotearoa. Guests for this session were Ngāhuia Te Awekotuku, Robert Sullivan and Bernard Makoare. Ngāhuia Te Awekotuku (Te Arawa, Tūhoe) is a leading feminist writer, lesbian-rights activist and advocate for Māori sovereignty. She has contributed to many international feminist journals and published both fiction and research-based works internationally. Robert Sullivan (Ngāpuhi) is a poet and academic. He is a significant internationally published Māori poet with seven collections of poetry released. His poetry is also widely anthologised. Sullivan's writing explores dimensions of contemporary urban experience, including local racial and social issues. His writing has a postmodern feel, where history and mythology, individual and collective experience, become areas of refined focus. Sullivan's work has won or been nominated for many awards Bernard Makoare (Te Waiariki, Te Kai Tutae, Te Rarawa, Ngapuhi-nui-tonu) is a traditionally taught wood carver, taonga pūoro musician and practising artist and designer. His work is a reflection of his heritage, his environments and the importance he places in whanaungatanga and relationships between people, places and significant objects.