The Marlborough Book Festival

Lauren Keenan in conversation with Emma Tucker at the 2024 Marlborough Book Festival

Lauren’s gripping historical novel set amid the New Zealand Wars in 1860 was an instant bestseller. Drawing on her study of Taranaki history, Lauren has told the story of two fictional women: English-raised Frances Farrington whose spiteful brother ensures their once well regarded family is out of step with settler society and Māori wahine Matāria White, a returned slave who married an Englishman and struggles for acceptance within her whānau.

Both Frances and Matāria do not belong solely to either...

Nici Wickes in conversation with Belinda Jackson

Nici's career reads like a dream come true and she admits to sometimes having to pinch herself. Restaurant reviewer, food writer, presenter for a TV food and travel show, and now cookbook author. Sharing her enthusiasm for cooking, eating, and travel, Nici lets us in on how she creates new recipes, how she got to star in her own TV cooking show, World Kitchen, and what it was like to get her dream job as food editor for the esteemed New Zealand Woman’s Weekly, only to see it fall aw...

Emily Perkins and Sue McCauley in conversation with Jane Forrest Waghorn

What would Briar Howland and Therese Thorne talk about if they shared a table in a Wellington cafe? The protagonists of Sue McCauley and Emily Perkins’ latest books have little in common on the surface, but both are tired of being manipulated and shoehorned into roles. Both are seeking freedom and belonging around genuine people. They are making decisions about how to go forward in their lives and relationships, choosing what to keep and what to let go. Sue and Emily talk with Jane about challenges, ch...

Emily Perkins in conversation with Nikki Macdonald

Emily talks about her novel Lioness which won the big fiction prize of 2024, The Acorn Fiction Prize at the Ockham NZ Book Awards. Judges described the novel as “an incisive exploration of wealth, power, class, female rage, and the search for authenticity”. The main character, Therese, is in her early 50s and her life is unravelling; her wealthy husband is being investigated for fraud and she is fascinated by a new friend Claire who has cast aside family and societal expectations. Warmth and humour - including a chaotic party scene at a...

Fletcher McKenzie in conversation with Des Ashton

Fletcher McKenzie is an accomplished author and aviator, known for his engaging books on aviation, including From the Pilot’s Seat. He is a passionate entrepreneur and holds two national flying titles. Fletcher created the global television show FlightpathTV and operates an international aircraft sales and parts supply business. He has served on various aviation trusts and executive committees and has published seven books aimed at pilots, earning him recognition in aviation circles worldwide.

Join Fletcher as he delves into his latest book, From the Pilot’s Seat, feat...

Rachael King in conversation with Jane Forrest Waghorn

What magic lies behind the crafting of spellbinding adventure stories with enduring appeal? Rachael’s new book is infused with her love of horses and long-lost words, with ancient Scottish myths, and Te Waipounamu landscapes. Join Rachael as she discusses The Grimmelings and reflects on other children's stories that are still great reads in adulthood. This session has been planned with an adult audience in mind, but young readers are welcome, accompanied by an adult. 

Lauren Keenan in conversation with Tania Miller

How can adults help spark children’s interest in Aotearoa New Zealand history? Lauren often gets asked this question and it is a subject close to her heart. Lauren talks to Tania about making history accessible and interesting to young readers and the special nature of writing for the middle reader audience.

The conversation is pitched at an adult festival audience, but the middle reader in your life is also welcome, accompanied by an adult. Lauren's middle reader books are Amorangi and Millie’s Trip Through Time and its...

Chris Tse in conversation with Sally McLennan

At the 2024 Marlborough Book Festival, the Poet Laureate talks about and reads from his poetry collections in which he explores questions of identity, including his Chinese heritage and queer identity, and addresses Aotearoa history. He also reflects on his time as Poet Laureate and his hopes for the power of poetry.  

Chris Tse is the New Zealand Poet Laureate 2022-2025. His first collection, How to be Dead in a Year of Snakes (2014), won the Jessie Mackay Award for Best First Book of Poetry. The collection revisits the 1905 murder of...

Nic Low is a writer, editor, arts organiser, te reo student, and dad with whakapapa links to Ōraka-Aparima in Southland. His writing on wilderness, technology, and race has been widely published and anthologised. His first book Arms Race, a collection of speculative fictions was shortlisted for the Readings and Steele Rudd prizes and named New Zealand Listener and Australian Book Review book of the year. He is a contributing editor at New Zealand Geographic magazine with a focus on Māori perspectives and former Programme Director of the WORD Christchurch Festival. 

Sue McCauley QSM, is a novelist, short story writer, playwright, journalist, and screenwriter. Her first novel, Other Halves (1982), won the Wattie Book of the Year Award and the New Zealand Book Award for Fiction. It was reprinted numerous times, in New Zealand and overseas, and was made into a film. In subsequent years Sue wrote five more novels, two short story collections and a biography. She has also written drama for stage and TV and adapted her own novel for the film Other Halves. Sue’s first book was loosely based on the early — and unconventional — relationship between Sue and he...

Nici Wickes was the Instagram foodie we all needed during lockdown - down to earth, great fun, and cooking up a storm with mostly pantry ingredients. Her gorgeous cookbooks A Quiet Kitchen and the just-released More from a Quiet Kitchen include many of those recipes along with her honest reflections on her struggle to find contentment in mid-age, how she finds happiness in living alone in a quiet coastal community, and where she draws inspiration from.

Most of her recipes serve one or two and serve to inspire those who also live alone, though many are easily...

Anna Smaill in conversation with Jane Forrest Waghorn

Anna’s latest novel moves between reality and magical realism, as two women navigate intense personal loss in a wonderfully hyperrealist, slightly eerie, Tokyo. Dinah is a New Zealander, teaching English in Japan, grieving her twin brother who was a gifted, but troubled, musician. Yasuko, who has talked to the natural world since her teens, is grieving her adult son’s move to independence.

In this exquisitely written novel, Anna explores the feelings that come with losing a loved one and teases out the tension between our inte...

Marlborough-based historian Ron Crosby has tramped the Urewera forests to retrace the steps of Te Kooti and his pursuers. That legwork deeply informs his latest book Te Kooti’s Last Foray. He discusses his findings and the adventures he had along the way.

Ron was in conversation with Pete Anderson at the 2023 Marlborough Book Festival.

Marlborough-based Wine journalist Tessa Nicholson has interviewed industry players and been witness to challenges overcome and enterprise rewarded.

Speaking to journalist Mike White at the 2023 Marlborough Book Festival, Tessa discusses her book Fifty Years, Fifty Stories, Marlborough the Region That Turned The Wine World Upside Down.

Joanne Drayton is an art historian, biographer and nonfiction writer. Her personal memoir The Queen’s Wife was published in January this year. Her book Hudson & Halls: The Food of Love won the non-fiction award at the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards in 2019. The Search for Anne Perry was a top-10 non-fiction on the New York Times bestseller list.

Joanne discusses the art of biography writing and shares stories about researching her acclaimed biographies of Ngaio Marsh, Frances Hodgkins, Anne Perry, Hudson and Halls, Rhona Hazard and Edith Collier. How does one unlock the secrets of other pe...

W J Moloney discusses Invincible, a novel based on the incredible story of one man’s journey through a world war and onto worldwide sporting glory.

The novel follows Son White, a Southland man who went to WWI with his horse Ben and returned a mentally scarred man who found redemption on the rugby field. After joining a local club in 1919 he managed to be selected for the All Blacks by 1921 and captained the team that was famously undefeated on their 1924 tour of the British Isles and France. W J discusses his five years of research on th...

Luke Elworthy discusses The Last Letter of Godfrey Cheathem, a satire that explores being the average sibling in a family of creative geniuses and pokes fun at Kiwi life. Luke reflects on his teen years at a conservative boarding school and a commune, his publishing work, and life in Marlborough.

Luke Elworthy was in conversation with Jason Henry at the 2023 Marlborough Book Festival.

Please note that Luke's readings from the book contain some strong language. If you're around kids or would rather avoid swearing, you might want to listen later or grab some headphones.

Growing up, Dr Peter Meihana often heard that Māori received special treatment and had advantages that other New Zealanders did not. However, this idea didn’t match with his life experience as Māori nor did it match with what he learned when he became hooked on studying history.

He blew the myth apart in his doctorate thesis and has kindly encapsulated his argument for the lay reader in his important new book, Privilege in Perpetuity, Exploding a Pākehā Myth.

Peter was in conversation with Emma Tucker at the 2023 Marlborough Book Festival.

Soraya Lane has followed her heart creating historical fiction and romance novels. Her series, The Lost Daughters, has been an international success, and her WWII novels are enormously popular with lovers of the historical genre.

At the 2023 Marlborough Book Festival she explains to Courtney Clark Michaels about her writing life and how she weaves empowerment of women in the #MeToo era into her fiction. 

Robbie Burton discusses his memoir, Bushline, which tells of life, love and adventures in the outdoors, as well as his long career in publishing.

The natural world played a central part in developing his youthful obsession with tramping, skiing and mountaineering, first in Nelson Lakes National Park, then throughout the Southern Alps.

Robbie was in conversation with Nikki Macdonald at the 2023 Marlborough Book Festival.

Joanne Drayton discusses her memoir, The Queen’s Wife, a modern love story featuring whakapapa, archaeology, art and heartbreak, with Jane Forrest Waghorn at the 2023 Marlborough Book Festival. 

Joanne’s story is one of two married women who met in 1989 in Christchurch. Their love threatens to cost them their children, families and friends and forces them to reassess their sexuality, identity and heritage. Against the odds, the couple’s new life together is rich in laughter, travel, unusual encounters, investigations into Viking raids, the Kingitanga movement and much more.

Mrs Jewell and the Wreck of the General Grant is a vivid imagining of the story behind the southern hemisphere's most famous shipwreck. The gold-laden General Grant struck the Auckland Islands in 1866, with just 14 men and a single woman making it to shore.

The mystery of what happened to the ship has attracted treasure hunters and adventurers ever since, and fascinated author Cristina Sanders and interviewer, journalist Mike White. This session is from the 2023 Marlborough Book Festival.

Gavin Lang's book Seeking the Light is about climbing the country’s highest mountains that rise above 3000m, but it's about the importance of getting outdoors to improve health and wellbeing.

Inspiring and exhilarating, each story captures the tension and drama of mountaineering in Aotearoa, and is vividly brought to life with Gavin’s outstanding photography. Gavin’s work is a beautiful and original contribution to mountain lore and literature.

Gavin was talking with fellow outdoorsman Mike White at the 2023 Marlborough Book Festival. 

Two consistencies throughout Eileen Merriman’s childhood were her fascination with the human body and a desire to be a doctor. She worked hard at science but excelled at English.

From doctor to fiction writer, the award-winning author delves into the science of blood and bone and the intricate depths of heart and soul during a conversation with Tessa Nicholson during the 2023 Marlborough Book Festival.

An utterly believable mimicking magpie narrates this extraordinary story set in the beautiful yet harsh landscape of Central Otago. Catherine Chidgey discusses her inspiration for the novel, with its exploration of themes encompassing domestic violence, the challenges of farming, the weird world of internet fame, and the vagaries of human relationships with animals, which she suggests can be at once closely bonded and exploitative.

Catherine was in conversation with Nikki Macdonald at the 2023 Marlborough Book Festival.

In his latest book, the Ockham illustrated non-fiction award-winning Jumping Sundays: The Rise and Fall of the Counterculture in Aotearoa New Zealand, Nick Bollinger tells the story of beards and bombs, freaks and firebrands, self-destruction and self-realisation, during the ‘60s and ‘70s, a turbulent and definitive period in New Zealand’s history and culture. ‘Bollinger puts a personal and personable stamp on this critical decade with words, sights and sounds that surprise and delight,’ writes cultural historian Bronwyn Labrum.

Nick was in conversation with Robbie Burton at the 2023 Marlborough Book Festival.

Hear a selection of guest authors take their work off the page and onto the stage in the gala opening of the 2023 Marlborough Book Festival.

In order, the audience heard from Joanne Drayton, Eileen Merriman, Cristina Sanders, Michael Bennett and Joanna Preston.

Their stories - whether true, imagined or a blurring of both - certainly got to the heart of the matter.  They'll certainly make you want to hear more. This was a special event to launch the festival, providing a taste of the treats ahead over the weekend to come.

Paula Morris has become a vital voice in New Zealand literature, with highly acclaimed short stories, essays and novels, including 'Rangatira', fiction winner at the 2012 NZ Post Book Awards and Ngā Kupu Ora Māori Book Awards. But her work goes well beyond her own pen, as an advocate for New Zealand literature and Māori writers.

Paula is the founder of the Academy of New Zealand Literature and Wharerangi, the Māori literature hub, and co-editor of 'Ko Aotearoa Tātou', an anthology of fiction, nonfiction, poetry and visual art created in response to the 2019 Christchurch mosqu...

Kate Camp’s most recent collection of poetry, How To Be Happy Though Human, is strikingly apt for current times.

In conversation with Cliff Fell at the 2022 Marlborough Book Festival, Kate discusses her influences and inspirations behind her highly acclaimed poetry, and reads selected poems.

Place and story go hand in hand. Landscape must first live on the page for it to blossom in the mind of the reader. But landscape in literature is both a reflection and an invention. Lloyd Jones and Kate De Goldi will discuss exploring the landscapes of their favourite books from childhood, and consider how they write 'place' into story.

This session was recorded at the 2022 Marlborough Book Festival,

Three contemporary New Zealand novelists talk writing. Sue Orr, Kirsten McDougall and Rebecca K Reilly discuss their inspiration, processes and generational insights. They also discuss the place of women - as authors and protagonists - in modern literature.

This session took place during the 2022 Marlborough Book Festival.

In From the Centre: A Writer's Life Patricia Grace takes us through her childhood, education, marriage and up to the present day, in this touching and self-deprecating story of her life – the life of a writer, of a Māori woman and of a teacher. It expresses the love for family and for ancestral land; shows the prejudices she's had to face and what made her stronger; and tracks her career as a writer.

We were thrilled to welcome back Patricia Grace to the Marlborough Book Festival in 2022 where she was in conversation with Paula Morris.

From cooking for Prime Ministers and dignitaries in Europe, to being chosen as personal chef for Maestro Luciano Pavarotti, having her own television show and long running radio career and, of course, her award-winning cookbooks, Julie Biuso’s life has been full of the joy of food and sharing it with others.

Listen to Julie in conversation with Charlotte Patterson about her illustrious and delicious career (make sure to eat first)!

Rebecca K Reilly (Ngāti Hine, Ngāti Wai) is the author of the smart and funny debut novel Greta & Valdin, which has topped the bestsellers list for weeks and won the Hubert Church Prize for best first book of fiction for the 2022 Ockham NZ Book Awards.

Greta & Valdin was a Newsroom novel of the year and the Ockham Award judges described it as “gloriously queer, hilarious and relatable”. Hannah Tunnicliffe writes in her review for Kete: “It's an Auckland barely seen in New Zealand fiction – young, diverse, told from the inside.

Racism, sexism and homophobia...

Steve Braunias captivated festival audiences at Spy Valley in 2016, talking of the 12 true stories of crime and punishment behind his book Scene of the Crime.

We were delighted to have him back at the cellar door for the 2022 Marlborough Book Festival with Missing Persons, his latest collection of true crime writing, exposing 12 extraordinary tales of disappearance in New Zealand.  

Kate Camp talks about her wonderful new memoir You Probably Think This Song is About You brimming with hard-won wisdom and generous humour. 

In conversation with Naomi Barton, Kate shares experiences as diverse as bad relationships, misheard songs, the fallibility of memory and the wrong turns we take.

In the words of author and reviewer Catherine Chidgey: “Kate’s essays shine with wit, intelligence, and a humanity that is both intimate and universal.” 

Eddy, Eddy

- in conversation with Tania Miller

Kate De Goldi's new book Eddy, Eddy follows Eddy Smallbore, an orphan, who is grappling with identity, love, loss and religion. It's two years since he blew up his school life and the earthquakes felled his city. Home life is maddening. His pet-minding job is expanding in peculiar directions. And now the past and the future have come calling – in unexpected ways.

"Ruth Shaw's life has been crammed with incredible adventure, and at times damned by terrible tragedy," writes Mike White in Stuff. "There have been pirates, and prostitutes, and protests and pig farming; gold mining, gambling and grief."

Speaking to Charlotte Patterson, Ruth talks about her uplifting story of survival, her tiny Fiordland bookshops and a memoir that's helping others address wounds from their past.

- in conversation with Rachael King

Climate change is no laughing matter, but Kirsten McDougall's fast-paced novel She's a Killer set in a foreseeable future Aotearoa is full of unexpected humour. Her apathetic protagonist Alice is content to observe society's disarray until a teenage genius with a fantastic backstory upends her life and emboldens her to act.

At the 2022 Marlborough Book Festival, Kirsten discusses her masterful plot, fresh characters and the power of fiction to help us face up to climate forecasts.

Susan Paris and Kate De Goldi are changing the landscape for young readers in New Zealand, as they curate fresh writing and illustration from some of New Zealand's top talent. The pair have followed on from the success of Annual and Annual 2 with Skinny Dip, an anthology of 36 school-inspired poems from 24 New Zealand poets, to reflect everyday experiences of Kiwi kids, from nits and crushes to rainy-day lunchtimes, through a range of poetic forms.

Learn what inspires these champions of young readers, and how they push boundaries to create bespoke books for a new generation. A session...