‘I sit looking at the phone number I’ve been given for US-based food writer Ruth Reichl and wonder if it’s better to flag the interview than risk dashing the fantasy. She writes so enthusiastically and passionately about food. She makes Anthony Bourdain and AA Gill look like a pair of miserable bastards full of disdain for their subject.’ Read More
Archive | July, 2014
‘Russia like a beguiling hole,’ Philip Matthews, The Press, 30 July 2014
As Moscow correspondent for the Guardian, Luke Harding had first-hand experience of Vladimir Putin’s strange new world. Philip Matthews reports. Read More
Meg Wolitzer interviewed by Wallace Chapman, ‘Sunday Morning’, RNZ, 27 July 2014
In case you missed it, Meg Wolitzer was interviewed by Wallace Chapman on Radio New Zealand’s ‘Sunday Morning’ this past weekend. Here is the link to the interview. Enjoy!
‘WORD Festival a phoenix rising for Christchurch,’ Jillian Ewart, Booksellers, 24 July 2014
‘Here’s a shout out to those intrepid Cantabrians – brave, resilient people who saw their recent writers festivals crumble in earthquakes one and two. Now they have dusted themselves off for a fantastic new festival, WORD Christchurch Writers & Readers Festival in association with The Press from August 27-31 2014.’ Read More
Rebecca Macfie wins NZSA Best New Book Award – Non-Fiction
Rebecca Macfie has just been announced the winner of the NZSA Best New Book Award – Non-Fiction for her book Tragedy at Pike River Mine. See the full list of winners here. Rebecca will take part in two sessions at the 2014 WORD Christchurch Writers & Readers Festival, Tough Stuff, where she will discuss how she writes about difficult subjects while still staying true to her artistic vision and Rebuilding Christchurch: Red Zones, Green Frames and Blueprints.
‘Avoid the kneejerk rebuild,’ The Press, 16 July 2014
“An outspoken architectural critic with first-hand experience of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans hopes Christchurch will avoid the “rear-view mirror” effect as it gets back on its feet. Reed Kroloff, the former editor-in-chief of Architecture magazine in the United States, joins a lineup of international writers in this year’s WORD Christchurch Writers and Readers Festival.” Read More
‘Kristin Hersh has no memory of writing her songs,’ The Press, 15 July 2014
“In the early 1980s – dark times for quality rock – Kristin Hersh was a central figure in the direction the genre would take. She was a key link between 1970s idols such as Patti Smith and Debbie Harry and the indie rock chicks to emerge in the late 1980s – Kim Deal, Kim Gordon and P. J. Harvey. Without Hersh and her contemporaries, we might not have Cat Power, Shirley Manson, St Vincent or even Grimes.”
Read More
Music is the WORD – rock musician Kristin Hersh headlines Christchurch’s literary festival, WORD Press Release, 15 July 2014
Seminal indie-rock musician Kristin Hersh is coming to New Zealand to share her music and prose at the WORD Christchurch Writers & Readers Festival, presented in association with The Press. Hersh will join literary heavyweights such as Eleanor Catton, Ruth Reichl and Meg Wolitzer at the multi-day festival, which runs from 27—31 August. She will perform her solo show WORDS + MUSIC on 30 August at the magnificent Transitional Cathedral and will make several other appearances throughout the festival.
Read the full press release here.
‘Catton early draw card for Writers’ Festival’, The Press, 22 May 2014
Kiwi novelist Eleanor Catton will speak in Christchurch as part of the city’s biennial writers’ festival. The Man Booker prize-winning writer will talk to local audiences as part of the five-day WORD Christchurch Writers and Readers Festival in August.
Catton earned global acclaim for her book The Luminaries, an 832-page novel set in Hokitika’s 1860s gold rush heyday. Her appearance at the Christchurch festival follows a 2100-seat sell-out session at the Auckland Writers Festival this month.
Literary director Rachael King said she was really excited to have Catton join the Christchurch festival.
Damon Young’s ‘How to Think About Exercise’, Reviewed by The Age
“The idea that exercise is ‘mindless’ derives from the mind-body dualism bequeathed to us by Descartes, and by Christianity’s distaste for the flesh. In the spirit of the School of Life’s practical approach to philosophy, Damon Young advocates a return to the holistic approach of the ancient Greeks, who believed exercise could be virtuous and character-building, as well as pleasureable. There’s the satisfaction that comes from pushing ourselves to our limits, humility as we face up to these limits, a new understanding of pain and the ‘agreeable horror’ of the sublime that teaches us to ‘savour the precariousness of life.’ Through the rituals and rules of competitive sports we learn the meaning of sacrifice without real loss. In pithy, accessible prose, Young offers up a new mantra for intelligent exercise – not ‘just do it’ but ‘just become it’.”
