A report on the crowds, chaos, bathroom selfies and conviviality of a busy and brilliant festival.

Day 1, Wednesday September 2

Flight was bumpy. Felt sick after landing but in the car to the hotel Mike Stevens told me and Gina, the festival’s artist liaison, about the Shortland pounamu currently on display at Christchurch Art Gallery. He was so passionate and interesting I forgot my nausea.

My first event was a workshop on tarot in a bar called The Last Word – cosy arrangements of tables and lush armchairs. Smell of mulled wine in the air. Kind, low lighting. Stacks of old books (some that looked valuable: hide them from the AI!). The tarot session sold out fast which both fascinated and worried me. The group trickled in, got cocktails, found their spots. I babbled to them about how I use the tarot (for telling stories) and Janeane Garofalo as the witch in the 90s film Now and Then and then we spent two hours together chatting, reading the cards. Lots of “this is so accurate!” Kiran Dass, Word’s programme director, managed to stay for the whole time, too. She got The Tower (iykyk).

Day 2, Thursday September 3

Woke up at 5am. This is what happens to me at festivals – the adrenaline. Took a photo out the hotel window to remember what a sunny day looks like. Went walking and had to shed jacket then jumper. 

Gina from yesterday picked up myself, Pax Assadi, Charlotte Glennie and Bryce Galloway to go to the University for our schools event. I was nervous. Secondary school students can be a tough crowd. But when we got there the morning’s authors were buzzing: “lovely kids!”

It was a packed lecture theatre – students from all over apparently. I had to speak first and had a sort of out-of-body experience watching myself try and entertain people less than half my age. Pax had them eating out of his hand – so chill and charming; Charlotte Glennie told the story of her life as a journalist in 10 minutes and it was fascinating and inspiring, the guts she has; and as soon as Bryce said the name of his long-running zine is Incredibly Hot Sex With Hideous People the students were his. 

The book signing after revealed that the kids really were the sweetest. Lots of them writing fantasy novels. Met school librarians who wanted to shake my hand because of this story on The Spinoff, but I wanted to shake their hands. Welled up. World is ridiculous. This is what it is about: young minds, their freedom, their potential.

Had a nap in the afternoon. Lying on top of the bed sweltering in the summery air: so thick. 

At 5.30pm met Charlotte Glennie and Elizabeth Easther in the lobby and headed to The Piano to catch Kiran Dass interview Olivia Laing who beamed in from their home in Suffolk. Fascinating conversation. Laing huge in the screen which cultivated intimacy. Didn’t have to squint to read their expressions. Laing discussed The Silver Book which is one of the best novels I read in 2025. Laing talked about Pasolini and how she thinks he saw what was coming: extractive capitalism blending with fascism and leading to the likes of Silvio Berlusconi and Trump: “the cartoonish brutality”. Laing also said optimism is politically essential: to know we can live in other ways; and that they’re drawn to unruly storytellers, to illuminate them for the next generations. 

Day 3, Friday September 4

Writers have flooded in by now. Bumped into Grace Thomas from Penguin NZ and writer Shariff Burke on the way back from Foundation Cafe at Tūranga. This is what I love most: people in one place. 

Had lunch with Alex Casey at Child Sister which is the best cafe I’ve been to so far. Saw Kate Camp and then Noelle McCarthy. Brannavan Gnanalingam and Murdoch Stephens have arrived too: caught them at the lifts, both with huge backpacks on. I imagine it’s books in there, not clothes. 

My favourite event of any festival is The Cabinet of Curiosities: short lectures on writers’ weird obsessions. Me and Odessa Owens from Massey University Press got front row seats. Molly Crighton started and was hilarious: nailed the brief with the thesis of the Minotaur as metaphor for lesbian awakening. Genius. Wish I could share her Venn Diagram with you. 

Bryce is next: he’s on zines again but this time about his catalogue of street wear: clothes he finds literally on the streets. His zines document each item, date found, material and what he did with it: “washed, given to op shop.” My notes app also recorded this: “Bryce mentions Theo MacDonald zine about lack of academic attention to the actor Adam Sandler. Zine about Artists Against Wankers Action Group Manifesto.”

John Summers is next with a typically thoughtful, funny and unexpected essay about Christchurch’s Barbadoes Street. This goes down well with the home crowd who “hmmm” and “ahh” all the way through as Summers uses slides to show the haunted places: pre-earthquake hotel, the Victorian cemetery, the Christchurch Basilica with the saints’ bones buried in jars once used for instant coffee. Classic Summers find. Also “ant cock is a unit of measurement” and “all hair cream and no socks”.

Erik Kennedy posed that the boat-attacking orcas are comrades and everyone loved it. White Glenis merch would have been snapped up for sure. Jo Randerson gave a funny, moving talk about change: starting from when Mt Egmont was changed back to its proper name of Taranaki; and how we got used to no plastic bags pretty quickly – she brought out an old New World bag and the nostalgia wave was palpable. Jo referenced the brilliant book Are Angels OK? Where poets paired with scientists. It was Bill Manhire’s idea of course. It was the first book launch I ever went to: Kim Hill hosted, I remember. I wrote in my notes: “We need a Department for Poets”. 

I was sort of wary of the Risky Women event but it was fucking amazing. Elizabeth Knox, Elisabeth Easther, Charlotte Grimshaw (in for Barbara Dreaver who was tied up in Palau) and Sally Wenley each giving talks on the topic of risk, hosted by effervescent and professional Stacey Morrison. 

The Piano was stuffed with well-dressed women who I could tell have been here before. Elizabeth Knox started: “I wouldn’t take a risk if I knew I was taking one.” Brilliant. Breathtaking writing. Hated the bit about climbing down a cliff face with young son. Terrifying. 

Charlotte Grimshaw: The real risk, she said, is talking frankly about her life and in particular her fraught relationship with her mother because she gets called the ungrateful daughter. “Mothers are sacred,” she said. “You risk being condemned as delusional or a fantasist making it all up.” 

Elizabeth Easther spoke at 150km an hour about cycling and it was hilarious and expansive and her acting chops shone out. 

Sally Wenley was spellbinding. Took us into a gang house where she was trying to get a story. Took us into the pain she experienced as a result of the bus accident that put her in a wheelchair and the decision to have a spinal cordectomy that would either rid her of the pain, make it worse, or kill her. By now we knew enough about Sally to know she of course had the surgery. It worked. 

Stayed up late with writers at a gin bar eating chicken and potatoes.

Day 4, Saturday September 5

My first event was Reading for Pleasure with myself, Shariff Burke, Charlotte Grimshaw and Kate De Goldi, our host. In the greenroom of The Piano Shariff, Charlotte and I wondered who would come to such a thing at 10am on a Saturday. 

I got nervous just before even though it’s the easiest thing in the world to be asked questions by Kate De Goldi about stuff you already know and love. Turned out there was a big audience, big at least for early on a Saturday. Kate was brilliant: always thinking, never feels like she’s sticking to questions on a page. Here are our reading recommendations (all books that influenced us in one way or another):

Charlotte Grimshaw: The Untouchable by John Banville; Bleak House by Charles Dickens; Père Goriot by Honoré de Balzac. 

Shariff Burke: The Nutmeg’s Curse by Amitav Ghosh; The Will to Change by bell hooks; Taiwan Travelogue by Shuangzi Yang

Claire Mabey: The Once and Future King by T.H. White; Northern Lights by Philip Pullman; Greenwitch by Susan Cooper.

My next event was chairing Noelle McCarthy about Stakes which is one of the best books I’ve read all year. After signing books I scooted over to Tūranga to find that Barry Soper was causing chaos. People were leaving from his event (apparently they’d got to the subject of Jacinda Ardern) and he’d arrived after the session was supposed to start. Classic Tower card energy. Someone brought enormous filled cookies into the green room but I was too high on the adrenaline of the event just done and the one to come to eat them. 

Noelle was a dream to interview. I watched the crowd as she gave exquisite, thoughtful, funny answers. They were nodding and staring and it reminded me again why these festivals are so much fun: the communion of it – all drinking from the same rich mug of ideas and personalities. 

My last event was Noelle interviewing Charlotte Grimshaw. Glad it was after me and Noelle because she’s just the most terrific interviewer. No notes quivering in her hands, just a tidy one-pager. Grimshaw is bloody fascinating. This ongoing reckoning of the events in the Stead family is one of Aotearoa’s most riveting literary dramas. Grimshaw talked about her Janet Frame memorial lecture last year in which she describes the discovery that her parents had placed a note in their archives to state that Grimshaw was delusional when she wrote The Mirror Book and therefore the memoir should actually be designated as fiction. You can listen to the lecture here, FYI. “I’ve been in intellectual combat with CK since I was one,” she said. 

Morgan from the festival picked me up from the hotel to fly home. Didn’t really want to leave the writers or the weather. Daffodils were embarrassing themselves all over Hagley Park. Falling down the banks of the Avon, the lushes. 

Flight home was bumpy. Landing was horrific and just kept thinking of that article that described planes trying to land in Wellington as seagulls in a stiff breeze. 

Day 5, Sunday September 6

Pissing down in Wellington and windy. Took my son to the zoo. Saw the snow leopard up close: really just looked like a huge domestic cat having a sleep. Did the Red Panda close encounter (belated Christmas present from family) and fell in love with the little creature who was lighter and more colourful even than I expected. 

But kept thinking about Word festival and what was happening. You miss so much. Asked Christchurch journalist Philip Matthews for his highlights (he was the one who had to wrangle Soper on stage). Philip responded immediately:

“Apart from getting Grant Robertson’s job wrong in front of hundreds of people (honestly, I was sure he works for the University of Waikato), Word Christchurch 2026 was one of the best ever for me. I wish more people had been at the session on He Told Us, the superb book on the Christchurch mosque terrorist by Chris Wilson and Michal Dziwulski, but then, it was a Friday morning. Yet the book is full of enough revelations to make any reader quietly angry. Former mayor Lianne Dalziel led the panel expertly, and a closing poem by Sara Qasem, who lost her father in the terror attack, was powerful and moving. But the other highlights for me were comedic: the effortless banter of Phil Goff and Chris Finlayson who may be (sorry, Gone by Lunchtime) the hosts of New Zealand’s leading political podcast; the witty questioning of rock god Jon Toogood by Shehan Karunatilaka; Dave Dobbyn’s droll, one-word response to why he took up songwriting (answer: “Girls”); the better-late-than-never appearance from much-loved broadcaster and raconteur Barry Soper, who got lost somewhere on the way to the venue; and the reliably smart questions from 93-year-old former Labour MP Margaret Austin who has a permanent seat at the front and interrogated everyone from Goff and Finlayson to Robertson to Tāme Iti, whose hour with Delaney Davidson was a masterclass in soulful wisdom.”

Also asked Brannavan Gnanalingam for his thoughts. Another immediate reply:

“My favourite thing about writers festivals is hanging out with the other writers, and Word is so great at creating spaces where we can all hang together. Anywhere we can find community as artists and audiences is important, especially in this current environment where funding is so precarious (particularly in Waipounamu). That said, it was lovely to see Dave Dobbyn perform, chatting with Shehan Karunatilaka (and sneaking in a few cricket questions), and seeing all of the excitement of the youth (and not so youthful) at Zinefest.”

Well done, Word. One of the best yet. My only regret is I forgot to get my bathroom selfie in Tūranga but Noelle McCarthy, Alex Casey and Damien Levi came through.