31 August 2018 | WORD Christchurch Festival
Presented by Heartland Bank
The stars will be shining on this most electrifying, energising and eclectic evening of the festival. Come and sample a little of what’s on offer for Christchurch’s biggest weekend of literature and ideas. Seven of our international stars will entertain you, make you think, make you smile and make you dream. Hosted by ardent booklover John Campbell.
Featuring:
Joseph Hullen (NZ) Ngāi Tahu storyteller
Robin Robertson (Scotland) Poet, The Long Take
Yaba Badoe (Ghana/UK) Documentary film-maker and author, A Jigsaw of Fire and Stars
Hollie McNish (UK) Poet, Nobody Told Me, Plum
Rajorshi Chakraborti (NZ) Novelist, The Man Who Would Not See
Philip Hoare (UK) Author, Leviathan, RisingTideFallingStar
Sonya Renee Taylor (USA) Poet, The Body is not an Apology
Podcasts
Missed out on one of our events? You’ve come to the right place! We record some of the best of WORD Christchurch events, so you can revisit them if you were lucky enough to see them, or hear them for the first time if you weren’t.
We are adding sessions all the time, including from our one-off events. Whether you listen at your desk, out walking, or doing the gardening, enjoy these stimulating, thought-provoking and entertaining sessions, including storytelling with Ivan Coyote, Why I’m No Longer Talking About Race with Reni Eddo-Lodge and Fight Like a Girl with Clementine Ford. We are also posting events from our recent 2018 festival, including sessions with Helen Clark, Hera Lindsay Bird & Hollie McNish, Selina Tusitala Marsh & Tusiata Avia, and many more to come.
All WORD Christchurch events are supported by our major funders Creative New Zealand, Christchurch City Council and the Rata Foundation.
2 September 2018 | WORD Christchurch Festival
Supported by University of Canterbury
In 2011 author, activist and performance poet Sonya Renee Taylor posted a photo of her 105kg big brown queer body in a corset because she believed that no human being should be ashamed of being in a human body. This small unapologetic act was the catalyst for what has become a global company and movement that reaches millions, exploring the intersections of radical self-love and social justice. Sonya discusses her new book and shares some of her extraordinary life and work with us and with poet, performer and guest programmer Tusiata Avia.
#suffrage125 #WhakatuWahine #SuffrageDay
31 August 2018 | WORD Christchurch Festival
In what may be her most ambitious and fascinating book, Dame Anne Salmond, Distinguished Professor of Māori Studies at the University of Auckland and author of many significant titles, considers New Zealand as a place where multiple worlds meet and collide. Tears of Rangi: Experiments Across Worlds begins with close inquiry into early Māori–European encounters, then investigates these with regard to waterways, land, the sea and people. In conversation with Eruera Tarena she explores how concepts of whakapapa and hau, complex networks and reciprocal exchange, may point to new understanding between races, and between humanity and the natural world.
2 September 2018 | WORD Christchurch Festival
Supported by Embassy of the United States of America and HarperCollins
‘Your book editor just snagged your spot on the bestseller list,’ was the headline in the New York Times as veteran crime fiction editor and die-hard Ngaio Marsh fan Dan Mallory took out the top place on lists around the world. Written under the pseudonym A.J. Finn, his debut thriller, The Woman in the Window, is a love letter to Alfred Hitchcock that Gillian Flynn called ‘Astounding. Thrilling. Amazing’, and Stephen King deemed ‘unputdownable’. A film directed by Joe Wright (Darkest Hour) and starring Amy Adams is under way. Did his years of editing give him the prefect formula to create a page-turning bestseller? Find out when he talks to writer and actor Michelle Langstone.
1 September 2018 | WORD Christchurch Festival
In the bestselling Diary of a Bookseller, Scottish second-hand book dealer Shaun Bythell charts the highs and lows of a year in the life of a man passionate and knowledgeable about books, struggling to make a living in rural Britain in the age of Amazon. From Wigtown in Scotland, he searches for rare books, strikes deals, tries to manage eccentric staff members and deals with awkward tourists. Shaun chats with fellow book dealer Brian Phillips about life in the trade, and its highs and lows. Can it survive? And really, do all Kindles deserve a bullet?
31 August 2018 | WORD Christchurch Festival
WORD Christchurch proudly continues its celebration of 125 Years of Women’s Suffrage with this very special additional festival event.
Helen Clark became active in politics 47 years ago, and first ran for public office in local elections in 1974. She entered parliament as a 31-year-old in 1981, led the Labour Party to victory in 1999 and was Prime Minister of New Zealand for nine years. She then took on a critical international role as Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme in New York.
One of her key focuses throughout this time has been the empowerment of women as she has paved the way for women to step up and lead.
In this WORD Christchurch exclusive, Helen Clark appears in conversation with the Mayor of Christchurch Lianne Dalziel about her new book Women, Equality, Power: selected speeches from a life of leadership.
#suffrage125 #WhakatuWahine #SuffrageDay
30 August 2018 | WORD Christchurch Festival
Presented by Milford Asset Management
Share the thrills, the spills and the passion, and find out what drives two extreme New Zealand athletes. As he outlines in his book, Adventurer at Heart, Nathan Fa’avae has been a semi-professional and full-time professional adventure athlete for 20 years, representing New Zealand at four different sports, and competing in 28 countries, all while battling a heart condition. Nathan chats with sports medicine doctor, coach and triathlete of 40 years John Hellemans, whose new book, Never, Ever Give Up?, explores the enduring and compulsive attraction of triathlons.
2 September 2018 | WORD Christchurch Festival
Presented by Kate Sylvester
Join two of the world’s shining stars of poetry, whose work and performances have attracted widespread attention in both popular and literary circles. Hera Lindsay Bird exploded onto New Zealand’s poetry scene with her self-titled debut collection, and has been travelling the world ever since. Hollie McNish’s funny and sincere poems about babies, sex and politics have attracted millions of views on Youtube, while also winning accolades such as the Ted Hughes Award. They performed together in Edinburgh last year to a sold-out crowd, and now we can see this dynamic pairing downunder. Not to be missed!
1 September 2018 | WORD Christchurch Festival
Presented by the University of Canterbury
Building a city – or in Christchurch’s case, rebuilding one – is an enormous and complex challenge. This fascinating and timely session looks at the science that goes into making a metropolis. In conversation with Michelle Dickinson, Ireland’s Laurie Winkless, author of Science and the City, will examine cities in six continents to find out how they deal with the challenges of feeding, housing, powering and connecting more people than ever before. She’ll visit urban pioneers from history, along with today’s experts, and uncover the vital role science has played in shaping the cities where we live.
1 September 2018 | WORD Christchurch Festival
Presented by All Right?
With the recent explosion of feminism, the #metoo movement and the emergence of the terms ‘toxic masculinity’ and ‘mansplaining’, it’s easy to see that being a man in 2018 is not as simple as it once was. Can we all benefit from men taking on so-called ‘feminine’ traits? Or should we just let boys be boys? Jarrod Gilbert (Patched) speaks to three writers – Dominic Hoey (Iceland), Omar Musa (Here Come the Dogs) and Chris Tse (He’s So Masc) – about depictions of masculinity in their work, growing up male, and what it means to be ‘manly as’.
2 September 2018 | WORD Christchurch Festival
It’s been said that writing about music is as difficult – and some would say as pointless – as dancing about architecture. We put that theory to the test by asking four authors to present new writing on the music that has provided the soundtrack to their life’s work, or just to their life. Readings will be followed by a discussion about the problems or the joys of music writing. Expect a range of musical genres as wide and varied as the writers’ own books. Featuring Philip Hoare, Pip Adam, Chris Tse and Nic Low, hosted by Kiran Dass.
31 August 2018 | WORD Christchurch Festival
Presented by Pegasus Health
The central event of Chessie Henry’s insightful family memoir, We Can Make a Life, is the February 2011 Christchurch earthquake. Chessie’s father Chris, a Kaikōura-based doctor, crawled into makeshift tunnels in the collapsed CTV building to rescue the living and look for the dead. In her remarkable book, Chessie interviews her father, considers the psychological cost of heroism and the meaning of home, and asks how a family can make a life in Africa, Tokelau and the shaky South Island. Chessie and Chris Henry appear in conversation with Bronwyn Hayward.
Supported by Trevor Hone Builders
29 August 2018 | WORD Christchurch Festival
Presented by Kathmandu
We open the festival with an incredible speaker who perfectly embodies our adventurous theme. At the age of 27, Robyn Davidson walked 2700 kilometres alone across the Australian desert, with a dog and four camels. She became instantly famous and then she wrote Tracks – an international best-seller, published in 20 languages, never out of print and made into a Hollywood feature film in 2013. That success launched an extraordinary career as a writer, explorer, filmmaker and cultural commentator.
Davidson will relive the journey of Tracks, and what she learned from it, in a keynote address accompanied by breath-taking images from Rick Smolan, the National Geographic photographer who followed her on part of the adventure. Be inspired to take a few more risks and invite adventure into your life.
2 September 2018 | WORD Christchurch Festival
Presented by Kathmandu
We close the festival with an inspiring event that brings together our theme of adventure, and our celebration of 125 years of women’s suffrage in New Zealand. Four extraordinary women tell stories from their adventurous lives and talk about what drives them to take risks, in their life and work. Hear Hollie Woodhouse, extreme sports star and editor of Say Yes to Adventure magazine; Lilia Tarawa, who grew up in Gloriavale and escaped as a teenager; Michelle Dickinson aka Nanogirl, science communicator and adventurer; Margaret Austin, Palmerston North Sunday school teacher turned Paris showgirl. Hosted by broadcaster and author Miriama Kamo.
#suffrage125 #WhakatuWahine #SuffrageDay
1 September 2018 | WORD Christchurch Festival
Presented by Milford Asset Management
Join MC Joe Bennett for this outrageous festival institution guaranteed to entertain and provoke. This year we give you a stellar international line-up, with Scottish crime writer Denise Mina, comedian Michele A’Court and satirist David Slack on one side, and novelist Paula Morris, cartoonist Tom Scott and American thriller writer/editor Daniel Mallory aka A. J. Finn on the other. A raucous night of argument and repartee is guaranteed!
30 August 2018 | WORD Christchurch Festival
Like the proverbial overnight sensation that actually took years, the roots of Donald Trump’s alt-right America stretch back to the 1990s, to patriot militias, white supremacists and Tea Party activists. Emboldened by right-wing media, they found a common object of loathing in the first black president. Their unlikely messiah was a controversial property developer and reality TV star, but is Trump really an ideologue? Investigative journalist David Neiwert has tracked US extremists for more than two decades. He talks with Listener journalist Paul Thomas about the result: Alt-America: The Rise of the Radical Right in the Time of Trump.
Presented by the New Zealand Listener and supported by the Christchurch City Council Sister Cities Programme.
1 September 2018 | WORD Christchurch Festival
2018 Margaret Mahy Memorial Lecture
Barbara Else, author of the fantastical Tales of Fontania Quartet, and of Go Girl, this year’s book of true stories about extraordinary New Zealand women, presents the third Margaret Mahy Memorial Lecture. Each festival we invite a writer to celebrate and honour Mahy’s extraordinary imagination. After recent discussion about the dearth of children’s stories featuring female protagonists, and in a suffrage celebration year, the time could not be better for Barbara to consider gender and imagination in storytelling, and to explore our need for story and voice. Introduced by Kate de Goldi.
#suffrage125 #WhakatuWahine #SuffrageDay
Proudly supported by the Ministry for Women's Suffrage 125 Community Fund
1 September 2018 | WORD Christchurch Festival
An unashamedly feminist event of readings, ruminations and discussions about human bodies, particularly women’s and gender non-conforming bodies, which over the centuries have been celebrated and reviled, legislated and liberated. We could look at everything from sex, addiction and reproduction to #metoo, #suffrage125, and technology, from feeding our faces to letting our freak flags fly. Featuring fiction, poetry and essay with Annaleese Jochems, Tayi Tibble, Kirsten McDougall, Sonya Renee Taylor, Juno Dawson, Helen Heath, Daisy Speaks and Ray Shipley, all held together by Charlotte Graham-McLay.
#suffrage125 #WhakatuWahine #SuffrageDay
Supported by the New Zealand Book Council and the Ministry for Women's Suffrage 125 Community Fund.
31 August 2018 | WORD Christchurch Festival
Selina Tusitala Marsh is this country’s first woman of colour Poet Laureate and as Commonwealth Poet she performed for the Queen and recently welcomed Barack Obama to New Zealand. She is also an associate professor at Auckland University, juggling international festivals and academic conferences with her busy family life – and marathon-racing. So many women share this kind of extremely demanding existence, as we try to do everything and do it excellently. Guest programmer Tusiata Avia, sister poet and friend from the frontlines, talks to Selina about her life, her poetry and how women, under pressure, may burn bright but not out.
#suffrage125 #WhakatuWahine #SuffrageDay
Supported by the National Library of New Zealand and the Ministry for Women's Suffrage 125 Community Fund
30 August 2018 | WORD Christchurch Festival
Presented by the National Library of New Zealand and the Royal Society Te Apārangi, and proudly supported by the Ministry for Women's Suffrage 125 Community Fund
To commemorate 125 years of women’s suffrage, we assemble a panel of extraordinary New Zealand women to discuss how far we have come since women were granted the vote, and how far we still have to go in the fight for gender equality. Featuring pioneering human rights activist Georgina Beyer, historian Dame Anne Salmond, musician and writer Lizzie Marvelly, head of Aotahi, the School of Māori and Indigenous Studies at the University of Canterbury Sacha McMeeking, and Paula Penfold, consulting journalist on Stuff’s #metooNZ investigation, chaired by Kim Hill.
With a special introduction by Gemma Gracewood and Megan Salole of the Wellington Interational Ukulele Orchestra.
#suffrage125 #WhakatuWahine #SuffrageDay
Thirty years after te reo Māori was declared an official language of Aotearoa, it seems to be in better health than it has been for a long time. Free classes started by Fush eatery’s Anton Matthews attracted hundreds of eager learners, and media such as RNZ have embraced its everyday use. But Don Brash is ‘utterly sick’ of it, and Green Party calls for compulsory te reo in schools have been met with some hostility. Join lecturer Hēmi Kelly, author of A Māori Word a Day, broadcaster Miriama Kamo and Hana O'Regan, General Manager of Oranga at Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu, for a korero with Jeanette King about the state of te reo in Aotearoa and how we can all help to keep New Zealand’s first language alive.
13 March 2018 | 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 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.
7 March 2018 | 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.
Warning: contains strong language and reference to sexual abuse
3 September 2017 | 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.
1 September 2017 | 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.
17 May 2017 | Presented as part of the WORD Christchurch Autumn Season in association with Auckland Writers Festival
We were delighted to close the Autumn Season with one of the most electrifying novelists writing in English today. Anne Enright, who won the Booker Prize in 2007 for The Gathering, writes about Irish families with great lyricism and black humour. In 2015 she became the inaugural Laureate for Irish Fiction, a three-year appointment. Her latest novel, The Green Road (longlisted for the 2016 Man Booker), set in a small town on Ireland’s Atlantic coast and spanning 30 years, is a tale of family and fracture, compassion and selfishness – a shattering exploration of the gaps in the human heart and how we strive to fill them. Anne Enright appeared in conversation with Morrin Rout.
16 May 2017 | Presented as part of the WORD Christchurch Autumn Season in association with Auckland Writers Festival
When Stephen Hawking once famously held a cocktail party for time travellers and nobody showed up, he said it proved time travel was not possible. But is it? If you have a lifelong fascination with time travel, or even just a passing curiosity about it, this event is for you. James Gleick, leading science communicator and author of Time Travel: A History, gives a mind-bending exploration of this fascinating subject: its subversive origins, its evolution in literature and science, and its influence on our understanding of time itself. From H.G. Wells to Doctor Who, from pulp fiction to modern physics, Gleick explores as many facets of time travel as possible in just one hour. Chaired by San Francisco State University Professor Daniel Bernardi, visiting University of Canterbury film and media studies scholar, science fiction expert and documentary filmmaker.
15 May 2017 | Presented as part of the WORD Christchurch Autumn Season in association with Auckland Writers Festival
Stella Duffy has the great distinction of being asked to complete Dame Ngaio Marsh’s unfinished novel Money in the Morgue, and she is well qualified for the task. New Zealand-raised, London-based Duffy has distinguished herself as a writer of crime fiction, with two Crime Writers’ Association Dagger awards under her belt, and of historical and literary fiction. Like Marsh, she is also immersed in the theatrical world. As the co-director of Fun Palaces, she was recently awarded an OBE for Services to the Arts. Duffy talks with writer and editor Liz Grant about her latest books — crime novel The Hidden Room and historical novel London Lies Beneath – as well her creative life and her pursuit of one of the original Queens of Crime, Dame Ngaio Marsh.
6 September 2017 | 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.
5 September 2017 | 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.
28 August 2016 | WORD Christchurch Festival
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
28 August, 2016 | WORD Christchurch Festival
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
28 August 2016 | WORD Christchurch Festival
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.
28 August 2016 | WORD Christchurch Festival
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
28 August 2016 | WORD Christchurch Festival
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.
27 August 2016 | WORD Christchurch Festival
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.
27 August 2016 | WORD Christchurch Festival
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
27 August 2016 | WORD Christchurch Festival
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.
26 August 2016 | WORD Christchurch Festival
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?
26 August 2016 | WORD Christchurch Festival
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.
26 August 2016 | WORD Christchurch Festival
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.
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