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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 , 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 Robe