Our Writers at Auckland Writers Festival 2024

Celeste Ng

Celeste Ng is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Everything I Never Told You, Little Fires Everywhere and Our Missing Hearts.

She is the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment of the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation, and her work has been published in over thirty languages.

FANTASY & ROMANTASY UNWRAPPED

SAT, 18 MAY 2024: 2:30pm - 3:30pm

Limelight Room, Aotea Centre

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Airanga Ngarewa

Born and raised in Pātea - Poi E Country, Airana Ngarewa (Ngāti Ruanui, Ngā Rauru, Ngāruahine) is the author of the bestselling novel The Bone Tree. He won the short story and poetry competitions at the Ronald Hugh Morrieson Literary Awards in 2022.

WRITING THE NEW ZEALAND MAN: A NEW ERA

FRI, 17 MAY 2024: 4:00pm - 5:00pm

Limelight Room, Aotea Centre

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Kate Evans

Kate Evans is an award-winning journalist and nature writer from New Zealand. Her work has been published in The Guardian, The Observer, Scientific American, National Geographic, Undark, and BioGraphic. She is a regular contributor to New Zealand Geographic magazine and has won multiple national media awards for science and environmental journalism and feature writing. She has also worked as a television producer and video journalist for the BBC, ABC, TVNZ, and the Washington Post, reporting from West Africa, Indonesia, the Whanganui River and the 2019 Christchurch mosque shootings.

Sam Smith

Sam Smith is a bestselling writer, comedian, and former-dentist. He pivoted from dentistry to comedy after a MS diagnosis caused him to partially lose his vision. He is a head writer for the TV show 7 Days, creates the tasks for Taskmaster NZ, and wrote for Wellington Paranormal. He is the go-to audience warm-up act for many shows including Dancing With the Stars, The Project, Have You Been Paying Attention? and Patriot Brains.

Shilo Kino

Shilo Kino (Ngā Puhi, Tainui) is a Newsroom columnist and a contributor to The NZ Herald, The Spinoff, The Pantograph Punch and The Guardian. She is taking an immersion te reo Māori course and making the podcast Back To Kura, and is the author of children’s book The Pōrangi Boy. All That We Know is her second book. She currently lives in Tamaki Makaurau.

Jane Campion

When Jane Campion won Best Director for The Power of the Dog at the 2022 Academy Awards, she made history as the first woman to win Academy Awards for both directing and screenwriting – adding to her many other plaudits including the Palme d’Or, two BAFTAs, two Golden Globes and a Silver Lion award at the Venice International Film Festival.

However, it was An Angel at my Table – her adaptation of Janet Frame’s renowned three-part autobiography – that brought Campion her first major critical screen success, and her connection with one of Aotearoa’s finest writers runs deep: from encountering Owl’s Do Cryas a Wellington teenager, to reading Angel at My Table as a young student at film school in Sydney, to her treasured encounters with Frame herself in the course of making the biopic.

In Frame’s centenary year, don’t miss one of our finest filmmakers in conversation about one of our finest writers, as well as her own remarkable career with NZ Book Award-winning novelist Emily Perkins.

Shashi Tharoor

Dr Shashi Tharoor, a third-term Member of Parliament for Thiruvananthapuram, is the bestselling author of twenty-five books, both fiction and non-fiction, besides being a former Under Secretary-General of the United Nations and a former Minister of State for Human Resource Development and for External Affairs in the Government of India,

THE YEAR THE WORLD VOTES

SAT, 18 MAY 2024: 11:30am - 12:30pm

Kiri Te Kanawa Theatre, Aotea Centre

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