Presented by LitCrawl Wellington, Harry Giles appears with the support of the British Council in partnership with Writers’ Centre Norwich, UK as part of the International Literature Showcase.

We are thrilled to welcome, fresh from the Writers & Readers at the New Zealand Festival, Scotland’s Harry Giles: performer, poet, and ‘general doer of things’, who says ‘I make art about protest and protest about art and write about anything… my work generally happens in the crunchy places where performance and politics get muddled up.’ Expect the unexpected in an evening of poetry and other adventures from this theatre- and game-maker, whose one-to-one show What We Owe was listed in the Guardian’s Best of the Edinburgh Fringe, and whose work defies categorisation.

With MC duties and support from Christchurch’s Ray Shipley: poet, comedian, youth worker and founder of the Faultline Poetry Collective.

WORD Christchurch in association with New Zealand Festival Writers & Readers

Join us for a special evening with Francis Spufford, one of Britain’s most diverse and acclaimed authors, of whom the New Yorker said, ‘intellectually he resembles a many-armed Hindu deity, able to pluck fruit and butterflies from anywhere on earth’s most robust tall trees’. Spufford’s seven books range in subject matter from science and history to theology and politics. The Child That Books Built was a love letter to literature; Unapologetic argued that ‘despite everything, Christianity can still make surprising emotional sense’; and in 2016 his first foray into fiction, Golden Hill, was a triumph, scooping numerous prizes, including the Costa Award for Best First Novel. A rollicking, suspenseful tale set in mid-18th century Manhattan, the novel pays loving tribute to the literature of that era. He appears in robust, wide-ranging conversation with Chris Moore.

WORD Christchurch Shifting Points of View 2017 in association with Christchurch Arts Festival

‘Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.’ Samuel Beckett

Join us for a night of stories in the beautiful Great Hall as six speakers share tales of failure and its role in their lives and careers. Whether it’s a building block to creative success as Beckett asserts, a sorry rock-bottom tale, or a philosophical pondering on the nature of failure itself, is it safe to fail? And can we ever fail better?

Featuring Australian feminist writer Clementine Ford, esteemed author Witi Ihimaera, storyteller and corporate warrior Hana O’Regan, everyone’s favourite poet/doctor Glenn Colquhoun, Christchurch mayor Lianne Dalziel, and playwright Victor Rodger.

WORD Christchurch Shifting Points of View in association with Christchurch Arts Festival

When award-winning British journalist Reni Eddo-Lodge wrote a blog post about the way discussions of racism were being led by those not affected by it, her words hit a nerve. Galvanised, she dug into the source of her feelings and kept writing. The result was Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race. We invite you to come and listen as Eddo-Lodge discusses, with playwright Victor Rodger, issues such as eradicated black history, whitewashed feminism, and the inextricable link between class and race, while offering a framework to see, acknowledge and counter racism.

WORD Christchurch Shifting Points of View in association with Christchurch Arts Festival

Following a performance of Jane Eyre: An Autobiography with Rebecca Vaughan, sit back and enjoy dark tales of gothic houses, damaged men, plucky heroines and secrets lurking in attics. What is the enduring appeal of the gothic women of literature? Who are the forgotten women, and the doppelgangers? An actor, a novelist and a librarian share their views, their favourite heroines, and improvise their own tales of women with great hair fleeing gothic houses. Rebecca is joined by Karen Healey and Moata Tamaira, chaired by Rachael King.

Warning: contains strong language and reference to sexual abuse

WORD Christchurch Shifting Points of View in association with Christchurch Arts Festival

Join Australia’s online sensation, fearless feminist heroine and scourge of trolls and misogynists everywhere Clementine Ford as she outlines her essential manifesto for feminists new, old and soon-to-be, and exposes just how unequal the world continues to be for women. Her incendiary debut Fight Like A Girl is a call to arms for all women to rediscover the fury that has been suppressed by a society that still considers feminism a threat. It will make you laugh, cry and scream, and fight for a world in which women have real equality. Introduced by journalist Beck Eleven.

WORD Christchurch Festival, 28 August 2016

New Zealand books have a reputation for being dark and gloomy, but three recent novelists blow that stereotype sky-high, using sly humour and a well-honed sense of the ridiculous. Damien Wilkins’ Dad Art skewers contemporary Wellington middle class and middle age; the plot of Danyl Mclauchlan’s Mysterious Mysteries of the Aro Valley comes from ‘exhaustive research, painful introspection [and] old Enid Blyton novels’; and Robert Glancy’s books have been called ‘funny and life-affrming’. Learn how they lighten the mood while exposing some serious truths. Chaired by Paula Morris.

WORD Christchurch Festival, 26 August 2016

Is it ‘language in orbit’ (Seamus Heaney) or does it make you feel ‘physically as if the top of [your] head were taken off’ (Emily Dickinson)? Poetry means something different to everybody. To celebrate National Poetry Day, some of New Zealand’s most distinguished poets will read their work and tell us what poetry is to them. Featuring Bill Manhire, Selina Tusitala Marsh, Fiona Kidman, and special guest Ali Cobby Eckermann(Australia). The MC is Paul Millar, a recent poetry judge of the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards.

WORD Christchurch Festival, 26 August 2016

Is there such a thing as the perfect short story and, if so, how do you identify it? More elusively, how do you create it? Three acclaimed writers (and teachers) talk about the exacting craft of short fiction, discuss what, in their opinion, makes a short story great, and read from their latest collections. With Tracey Slaughter (Deleted Scenes for Lovers), Bill Manhire (The Stories of Bill Manhire) and Frankie McMillan (My Mother and the Hungarians and other small fictions), chaired by Emma Neale.

WORD Christchurch Festival, 28 August 2016

Listen in on a conversation between two extraordinary poets and performers, to celebrate the release of Tusiata Avia’s recent collection, Fale Aitu | Spirit House, which contains poems that are confessional and confrontational, gentle and funny. Set in Samoa, Christchurch, Gaza and New York, her poetry combines stories from myth and the everyday. Tusiata is joined by Selina Tusitala Marsh – who, among many achievements, recently performed her poem ‘Unity’ for the Queen – to talk about their work and their world views, and to share their poems.

WORD Christchurch Festival, 27 August 2016

Worldwide, less than one in four people we hear from or about in the media is female, and men out number women in parliament by four to one. Over her 20 years in the public sphere, author and human rights advocate Tara Moss has had to face down nerves, critics and backlash. Now she wants to pass her skills on so that other women and girls can find their voice. She talks to The Press editor  Joanna Norris about her new book, Speaking Out, and about why making a noise matters.

Supported by: HarperCollins

WORD Christchurch Festival, 26 August 2016

Every morning for the last 30 years, C.K. Stead has written fiction and poetry that has won him numerous accolades both in New Zealand and overseas. His latest book, Shelf Life, collects the best of his afternoon work: reviews and essays, letters and diaries, lectures and opinion pieces. Stead writes about everything from David Bain to Parnell, and offers reflections on his time as the current New Zealand poet laureate. Throughout, he is vintage Stead: clear, direct, intelligent, decisive, personal. He talks with Paul Millar about life on and off the shelf.

WORD Christchurch Festival, 27 August 2016

Steve Hely is probably best known to New Zealanders for his work on the small screen: The Offce, American Dad! and 30 Rock, among others. But his first novel, How I Became a Famous Novelist, won the Thurber Prize for American Humor, and his latest project is part travel book, part pop history and part comic memoir. The Wonder Trail, which follows his journey through Central and South America, has been described as ‘casually insightful, refreshingly honest, and, most of all, amazingly funny’. He joins Toby Manhire to talk fiction, TV, travel and comedy.

Supported by Embassy of The United States of America

WORD Christchurch Festival, 27 August 2016

Why do true crime stories hold so much fascination for readers and viewers? Two recent books, Steve Braunias’s The Scene of the Crime, and Michael Bennett’s In Dark Places, examine high-profile New Zealand murder cases and trials. And the Serial podcast and Making a Murderer television series have made armchair jurors of us all. Jarrod Gilbert talks to Steve Braunias and Tim McKinnel, the investigator behind the Teina Pora case, about false confessions, and the nature and characteristics of homicide.

WORD Christchurch Festival, 27 August 2016

John Freeman lives and breathes books. He is a renowned book critic, the former editor of Granta, one of the world’s most respected literary journals, and the author of Shrinking the World: The 4,000-year story of how email came to rule our lives and How to Read a Novelist. As founding editor of the new literary journal Freeman’s, which has just released its second issue, he publishes some of the world’s most respected writers, from Haruki Murakami to Marlon James and David Mitchell. He chats to Paula Morris about his literary life, connections and work.

Supported by Embassy of The United States of America

WORD Christchurch Festival, 27 August 2016

Lecretia Seales’ fight for agency over her own death went all the way to the High Court and gripped a nation. In Lecretia’s Choice, her husband Matt Vickers tells her story and makes a case for the legalisation of assisted dying. He is joined by death positivity advocate Caitlin Doughty and the University of Canterbury’s Ruth McManus to examine society’s attitudes to death and dying, including the argument for euthanasia. Chaired by journalist Cate Brett.

WORD Christchurch Festival, 26 August, 2016

We are thrilled to welcome one of Canada’s most respected and bestselling literary novelists, Elizabeth Hay, whose work has been likened to that of Alice Munro, Margaret Atwood, A.S. Byatt and Annie Proulx. Hay’s much-praised recent novel, His Whole Life, is a coming-of- age story set in the mid-1990s when Quebec was on the verge of leaving Canada. She talks about her life, work and country, including those Trudeaus, with Hal Wake, Director of the Vancouver Writers Fest.

Supported by Canada Council of the Arts / Conseil des Arts du Canada

WORD Christchurch Festival, 26 August, 2016

Two writers, a generation apart, consider their identity as New Zealanders of Chinese descent. Helene Wong received a standing ovation for her lecture at the 2016 Auckland Writers Festival based on her book Being Chinese: A New Zealander’s Story, in which she attempts to ‘find [her] place in the world’. Alice Canton’s play White/Other ‘blows apart the re- presentations of Asianness and attempts to fix it back together in a sticky overflowing mess’.

Don’t miss this fascinating conversation about common ground and different life experiences.

WORD Christchurch Festival, 28 August, 2016

The Arctic ice is receding each year, but just as irreplaceable are the culture and the wisdom that have allowed the Inuit to thrive in the Far North for so long. And it’s not just the Arctic: the whole world is changing in dangerous, unpredictable ways. Sheila Watt-Cloutier has devoted her life to protecting what is threatened and nurturing what has been wounded. Her book, The Right to Be Cold, explores the parallels between safeguarding the Arctic and the survival of Inuit culture. She talks with Garrick Cooper of Aotahi, the school of Māori and Indigenous Studies at the University of Canterbury, about her culture and the Arctic, and what can be done to save both.

Supported by Canada Council of the Arts / Conseil des Arts du Canada

WORD Christchurch Festival, 28 August, 2016

When her beloved daughter Abi was killed in a car accident that also claimed the lives of family friends Ella and Sally Summerfield, Lucy Hone turned to her practice in resilience psychology to find ways of supporting her family in their darkest days, and to discover a new way of living without Abi. In this talk, Lucy shares her story and research from her recent book What Abi Taught Usso that others can work to regain some sense of control and take action in the face of incomprehensible grief and trauma.

Presented by Ballantynes

WORD Christchurch Festival, 27 August 2016

Ten years a er the publication of his international bestseller, The Weather Makers, acclaimed scientist and author Tim Flannery argues that the earth’s climate system is approaching a crisis. Catastrophe isn’t inevitable, but time is fast running out. His recent book, Atmosphere of Hope, provides both a snapshot of the trouble we’re in and an up-to-the-minute analysis of some of the new and emerging possibilities for mitigating climate change. Flannery joins Metro editor-at-large Simon Wilson to outline an array of innovative technologies that give cause for hope.

Presented by UC Science

WORD Christchurch Festival, 26 August 2016

Do not doubt that the stars are on fire tonight. Come and hear seven of our guests speak, read, sing and entertain you with a burning passion in the beautiful surroundings of the Isaac Theatre Royal. Celebrate the beginning of an amazing weekend of festival events and sample a little of what is on offer. Introduced by ardent book-lover Kim Hill. Featuring Sir Tipene O’Regan, Steve Hely, Tusiata Avia, Caitlin Doughty,  Stephen Daisley, Hollie Fullbrook  and Ivan E. Coyote.

Presented by PWC

WORD Christchurch Festival, 28 August 2016

Be transported to Antarctica, the world’s last great wilderness, with tales of adventures on icy land and sea. ITV science broadcaster Alok Jha was recently trapped in the Antarctic ice aboard a Russian research ship that became the focus of an international row; Rebecca Priestley’s new Antarctic science anthology, Dispatches from Continent Seven, tells tales of scientific derring-do old and new; Matt Vance’s Ocean Notorioustracks stories of the Southern Ocean, from obsessive Southern explorers of the heroic era to solo sailors in tiny yachts. Chaired by Metro’s editor-at-large Simon Wilson.

Presented by Antarctica New Zealand
Supported by The Royal Society of New Zealand

WORD Christchurch Festival, 28 August, 2016

We welcome Caitlin Doughty, author, mortician, death positive advocate, and presenter of the smart, funny and informative ‘Ask a Mortician’ web series. According to the Guardian, Doughty’s memoir, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes and Other Lessons from the Crematorium, which charts her early years in the funeral business, is ‘a hilarious, poignant and impassioned plea to revolutionise our attitudes to death’. Doughty explodes taboos with wit, wisdom and insight, and tells it straight in matters of death and dying. With Christchurch coroner Marcus Elliott.

Presented by Kate Sylvester

WORD Christchurch Festival, 27 August 2016

Few issues right now are as topical as water: who owns it, what it’s worth and how we can keep it clean. But what do we really know about water and where it comes from? In The Water Book, journalist and ITV science correspondent Alok Jha gets to the bottom of this extraordinary yet everyday substance, in a fascinating story that takes us back to the beginning of the universe. He joins Simon Morton from RNZ’s This Way Upprogramme to talk about the wet stuff.

Presented by Environment Canterbury
Supported by The Royal Society of New Zealand

WORD Christchurch Festival, 28 August 2016

In the words of one newspaper, Ivan E. Coyote ‘is to Canadian literature what K.D. Lang is to country music: a beautifully odd fixture’. A seasoned performer and audience favourite at festivals worldwide, Ivan often grapples with the complex and intensely personal issues of gender identity, as well as family, class, social justice and queer liberation, but always with a generous heart, a quick wit and the nuanced and finely honed timing of a gifted raconteur. In this session, Ivan shares stories and chats with poet and comedian Sophie Rea.

Supported by the Canada Council for the Arts.

WORD Christchurch Festival, 26 August 2016

What a time to be a teenager. An award-winning New Zealand novel, Into the River, which depicts the reality of teen sex, faces outcry and a temporary ban, yet there is infinite access to often unrealistic and misogynistic online pornography. YA novelists Ted Dawe and Karen Healey, and sexual therapist Frances Young, with chair Mandy Hager, discuss what young adults can handle and gain from sex in literature. Do books with sexual themes promote empathy and provide a safe space for teens to explore dangerous situations? Or are we sending our kids straight to hell?

WORD Christchurch Festival, 27 August, 2016

“The more our stories [are] told, the more our friends and family and neighbours [see] who we are, the more we [are] able to dismantle prejudices and get to the truth… stories do matter, because empathy is everything.” David Levithan

We are thrilled to welcome best-selling Young Adult author David Levithan to present the second biennial Margaret Mahy Memorial Lecture, which celebrates her extraordinary imagination. David’s many novels include Every Day, Two Boys Kissing, Will Grayson, Will Grayson (with John Green), and his latest, You Know Me Well (with Nina LaCour), and he is well qualified to speak on diversity in literature.

Supported by the Embassy of the United States of America

WORD Christchurch Festival, 28 August, 2016.

Christchurch/Ōtautahi is a sister to many cities around the world, and we have invited writers from two of them — Adelaide and Seattle — to talk with Ngāi Tahu writer Nic Low about their acclaimed work and about the challenges and opportunities facing indigenous writers. As an Aboriginal descended from the Yankunytjatjara language group, Ali Cobby Eckermann’s chief concern is to express what she sees as the untold truth of Aboriginal people. Her most recent books include a verse novel, Ruby Moonlight, and a memoir, Too Afraid to Cry. Elissa Washuta is member of the Cowlitz Indian Tribe and a writer of personal essays and memoir, with two books, Starvation Mode and My Body Is a Book of Rules.

Supported by: Christchurch City Council Sister City Programme

WORD Christchurch Festival, 25 August, 2016.

We celebrated the opening night of the festival with a session that embraced the ‘planet and its people’ theme by looking at the impact literature can have on a world in turmoil. What responsibilities, if any, do writers have to engage with the issues that trouble us? Can fiction and poetry make a difference in people’s lives? John Freeman includes work of a political bent in his journal Freeman’s; Victor Rodger’s plays explore themes of race and sexuality; Kate De Goldi champions complex writing for children. Chaired by Peter Biggs.

Supported by the New Zealand Book Council

*Nadia Hashimi was originally scheduled but was unable to participate

WORD Christchurch Festival, 28 August 2016

What are the issues surrounding sex work today? Have things changed for the better or are 
the same old stigmas causing risk to safety and health? And what is the fallout for women who expose themselves twice by writing about this controversial subject? Journalist Julie Hill, who has recently written about Auckland’s K Rd, talks to three writers about their experiences working in the industry. Kate Holden is the author of the highly acclaimed In My Skin; Leigh Hopkinson’s Two Decades Naked documents her years as a stripper; Jodi Sh. Doff reflects on New York’s Times Square in the 1970s and 80s.

WORD Christchurch Festival, 26 August 2016

With migration and war so much in the news, and questions being asked about our own refugee quota, we discover the real faces behind the headlines. Meet just a few of the many people to whom Christchurch has opened its doors, and hear their stories. How did they come to be here? What situation in their own country drove them away? With special guests Dr Hassan Ibrahim and Abbas Nazari, and input from Murdoch Stephens of Doing Our Bit, in conversation with Donna Miles-Mojab.

Supported by All Right.

WORD Christchurch Festival, 27 August, 2016

New York-based BUST, launched as a small zine in the heady days of the Riot Grrl movement, has become a powerhouse of modern feminist culture, with Carrie Brownstein, Laverne Cox and Amy Schumer among its recent cover stars. This month publishing its 100th issue, the magazine was one of the founders of ‘girlie feminism,’ a third wave feminist strategy which re-evaluated and embraced traditional feminine activities. Co-founder and editor Debbie Stoller, who also wrote the ‘Stitch ‘n Bitch’ books, talks magazines, crafts and every wave of feminism with Charlotte Graham.

*We apologise for lack of audibility for audience questions (one of which is extremely long!) in the last part of the interview.

WORD Christchurch, 27 August, 2016

With adept and articulate MC Joe Bennett in the chair, a stellar line-up of debaters and an irresistible moot – ‘That we would if we couldn’t get caught’
– a raucous night of argument and repartee is guaranteed.

Often funny, sometimes shocking and always entertaining, the Great New Zealand Crime Debate has become a WORD Christchurch festival institution. Trying to convince Joe of their intellectual superiority and verbal dexterity in 2016 will be, for the affirmative, Professor of Law Ursula Cheer, The Press satirist Andrew Gunn, and award-winning journalist Paula Penfold. On the other side will be Christchurch lawyer Kathryn Dalziel, murder expert and author Jarrod Gilbert, and novelist, travel writer and 30 Rock and Late Show with David Letterman writer Steve Hely.

Suki Kim chaired by Paula Morris

30 August 2015

A glimpse inside the mysterious closed-off world of North Korea, a country where a military dictatorship exploits the myth of a Great Leader to its own citizens, who are “imprisoned in a gulag posing as a nation”, Suki Kim’s extraordinary memoir of her time going undercover to teach English to the sons of North Korea’s ruling class, Without You, There is No Us, a New York Times bestseller, was written at great personal risk.

Peter Singer chaired by Eric Crampton

7 September 2015

How can we do the most good? Peter Singer, often described as the world’s most influential living philosopher, presents a challenging new movement in the search for an ethical life. Effective altruism requires a rigorously unsentimental view of charitable giving, urging that a substantial proportion of our money or time should be donated to the organisations that will do the most good with those resources, rather than to those that tug the heartstrings.

Peter Singer is the author of more than 20 books, including the groundbreaking work on ethics, Animal Liberation, The Ethics of What We Eat, The Life You Can Save, and his latest, The Most Good You Can Do. He is Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics, Princeton University, and Laureate Professor, School of Historical and Philosophical Studies, University of Melbourne.

Patricia Grace and Paula Morris in conversation

30 August 2015

In her first novel in a decade, treasured writer Patricia Grace explores issues that permeate New Zealand history and society: racial intolerance, cross-cultural conflicts and the universal desire to belong. Spanning several decades and set against the backdrop of a changing New Zealand, Chappy is a story of enduring love. She discusses her work with Paula Morris, whose On Coming Home explores similar themes of nostalgia, memory and belonging as she reflects on returning to live in New Zealand after more than half a lifetime in foreign places.

Fiona Farrell, Anna Smaill, Hamish Clayton, Hugh Nicholson, chaired by Lara Strongman

30 August 2015

Taking the Christchurch blueprint as a starting point, this panel looks at ways in which we imagine cities, either in fiction, in history, or in contemporary life; whether as utopias or dystopias, cities imagined or reimagined.

Margaret Wilson chaired by Bronwyn Hayward

30 August 2015

In the era of public choice and free markets, and when widespread public protest against global treaties such as the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement is having little effect, does the New Zealand state still have the best interests of its individual citizens at heart? Margaret Wilson argues that the shift to a neo-liberal public policy framework has profoundly affected the country’s sovereignty and that New Zealanders must continue to engage in the struggle to retain it for the sake of individual and community wellbeing.

Jesse Bering chaired by Rachael King

30 August 2015

Jesse Bering argues that we are all sexual deviants on one level or another. He challenges us to move beyond our attitudes towards ‘deviant’ sex and consider the alternative: what would happen if we rise above our fears and revulsions and accept our true natures? WARNING: Adult themes. Obviously.