Auckland Libraries

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 con

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

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 woul

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 a

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 Movi

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

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

Music and poetry are almost always part of the opening night of Going West, 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. 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 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 th

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 Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit, for services to literature, as part of the Queen's Birthday Honours. Stephanie has taught English and creative writing at the University of Auckland. She is also a teaching fellow at the University of Waikato, and co-founded the Auckland Write

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 b

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 barreling 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.

Russell Brown and Colin Hogg discuss Colin’s book The High Road, an exploration of legal marijuana culture in America, and its implications for Aotearoa. 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

Business journalist Rod Oram was the 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, i

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 Academy of New Zealand Literature.

Tu 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, Tu 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. Tu is a unique new collaboration that can only have come from the South Pacific. It slips and slides across genres, rhythmically and sonically

As part of an outstanding opening night, poet Selina Tusitala Marsh delivered an electric live poetry reading at Going West 2017. That year we were forced to relocate Going West to the former Waitakere City 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 Depa

For the very first session at the very first Going West Festival in 1996, it felt appropriate to open with the first language of Aotearoa, 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 anthologi

Earlier this year, professional genealogists Michelle Patient and Fiona Brooker joined us via Zoom to celebrate the first anniversary of their fortnightly virtual lounge sessions Talking Family History. In this talk, Michelle and Fiona chat about what led them to start their online sessions; they discuss family history and DNA, share research strategies and provide valuable tips for overcoming brick walls. https://talkingfamilyhistory.com/ Music: Ketsa. When it all falls.

In this talk, family historian Iris Taylor takes us through a brief history of New Zealand nursing up to the First World War. Covering such incidents as the torpedoing of the Marquette which killed New Zealand Nurses, she describes her 2015 pilgrimage to remember these women. Image: New Zealand Nurses, 1916-1917. Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections 7-A15887. Music: Ketsa. When it all falls.

Alison and Ineka discuss some recently released books that are full of introspection and intensity, loneliness and liberation. They also ask if a book’s typeface can be aggressive. What does that mean? Listen to find out.