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Photos from Dunedin Young Writers Festival and Verb Readers & Writers Festival in Wellington. (Image: Archi Banal)
Photos from Dunedin Young Writers Festival and Verb Readers & Writers Festival in Wellington. (Image: Archi Banal)

BooksNovember 16, 2023

Why we need more arts events for young people 

Photos from Dunedin Young Writers Festival and Verb Readers & Writers Festival in Wellington. (Image: Archi Banal)
Photos from Dunedin Young Writers Festival and Verb Readers & Writers Festival in Wellington. (Image: Archi Banal)

Two Aotearoa writers festivals are expanding the scope of what a writers festival can be – and who they can be for. Shanti Mathias went to both this year.

Even though it’s well into spring, Ōtepoti is cold, streets dark with rain. Inside a cosy room a stone’s throw from the Octagon, parents, kids, teenagers and young adults are lined up on chairs, listening to poets from the Dunedin Young Writers Association. The poets describe what they’re writing about: a moment saying goodbye to a friend, feeling intense and ephemeral feelings about the world while sitting on the lawn outside Dunedin’s iconic First Church. The kind of stuff that lots of teenagers write poems about, but poignant still. 

Then there’s a brief description of what a zine is and the group disperses to tables, the poets now talking about their friends as they cut up magazines; a younger kid helps another draw squiggles over some folded pages. 

The zine-making workshop was just one in a medley of events presented at this year’s Young Writer’s Festival, the country’s only writing festival specifically aimed at young people. Over a weekend in Dunedin, dozens of events and workshops celebrated everything from posters and plays to the art of comedy improvisation and slam poetry. Produced by the Dunedin Fringe Festival, the event is unusual in that it’s aimed at young people: not just high school students, but university-age young adults too. 

“I’m not sure there’s any creativity in North Dunedin,” says Hetal wryly. A uni student, she’s using the opportunity of the festival to create a zine about men in film making. 

“It’s nice to get a chance to come into the city for things like this,” agrees her friend Amy, who is gluing photos she’s cut out of an art magazine to her zine. “The uni is making cuts to the arts programmes, and lots of adults view arts as just like, a hobby – I don’t have much time for creative stuff, so I appreciate the Young Writers Fest.” 

Abby Howells, Josiah Morgan, Janaye Henry and Dan Allan in improv show Fast Laughs, NZ Young Writers Festival 2023. (Photo: Armstrong Photography courtesy of Dunedin Fringe)

The Young Writers Festival is part of the changing landscape of books programming in Aotearoa. Nearly two months after attending the YWF in Ōtepoti, I spent a dreamy, hectic weekend at Verb Readers & Writers Festival in Wellington. (Disclosure: Verb was founded by The Spinoff’s books editor Claire Mabey, but I paid for all the events I attended myself.) For the first time, Verb had a Te Tiriti partnership with Te Hā o Ngā Pou Kaituhi Māori, an organisation that helps Māori writers flourish. 

Both festivals featured a range of free and cheap events; the YWF was in fact entirely free for people of all ages. “Free events are necessary,” says Jennifer Cheuk, creator of Rat World, an independent arts magazine. Cheuk was the YWF’s guest curator this year, and she remembers the importance of free events to her own formation of a creative practice. “My parents took me to free events, and I was so inspired, so exhilarated – I want other people to feel that excited about creativity.” She appreciates that funding is always a challenge, especially for artists operating independently. 

In a similar vein, Verb, which has now been around for a decade, has changed how it presents events to make them more accessible. Its signature event, the LitCrawl extravaganza, which began in 2014, features dozens of simultaneous events across the city, a sort of literary themed choose-your-own-adventure. Entry has always been by donation, and other festival events have been free. But the festival still takes place in central Wellington, which can be hard to get to for many communities. This year, Verb hosted Mō Tātou Te Kaupapa, curated by Te Hā o Ngā Pou Kaituhi Māori as a festival within the festival, a series of free events showcasing indigenous storytelling at Pātaka museum in Porirua.

Sara Hirsch from Motif Poetry leads a poetry slam workshop, NZ Young Writers Festival 2023 (Photo: Armstrong Photography courtesy of Dunedin Fringe)

Making literary events more open to new audiences also means that the people putting together the programme have to look more like those they want to reach. At the YWF events I attended, I spotted Cheuk all over the place, often in a swishy (and very cool) coat. She put together an event of writers talking about reading things above their age level, as well as events about graphic novels and stickering. “I was interested in alternative storytelling – showing people that comics or film scripts or posters are writing, even if I never saw those being represented in literary circles [when I was growing up].” 

That the YWF is a rarity among arts events in its youthful focus seems to beg the question: why aren’t there more events like this? That young people have less money for tickets creates a funding constraint, for one. The Auckland Writers and Readers Festival has an extensive schools programme, but most of the events are still for an older audience – as are the vast majority of the artists featured. It’s a tricky line to tread: at the opening for the YWF, a free event open to all, attendees were given a ticket for a free drink at the bar; while non-alcoholic options were available, selling alcohol at an event aimed at young people seems slightly incongruous – even if the vast majority of those present were over 18, and enjoying the cheese platters too. 

Verb’s LitCrawl draws a different – at least somewhat less grey-haired – audience than other literary festivals often do. Diverse settings help, with events in bookshops and bike shops and BATS Theatre. I attended Breathing Two Breaths, featuring Māori artists and writers Kahu Kutia and Jessica Hinerangi. Two dozen people were crowded around books about textiles. The low entry fee and setting helped the event seem welcoming but the warmth of the relaxed conversation, with both artists taking turns to ask questions and making jokes about it, lots of use of reo, was what particularly made me feel that writers events didn’t have to be formal and erudite. I know my 18-year-old self, attending literary events for the first time, would have enjoyed it too. 

Te Paepae Rangatahi panel at Verb Readers & Writers Festival featured Nadia Hineaorangi Solomon, Mariwakiterangi Paekau and Mairangimoana Te Angina speaking on their hopes for the future of publishing. Curated by Te Hā o Ngā Pou Kaituhi Māori. (Photo: Rebecca McMillan)

Bram, a year 13 student who is a member of the Dunedin Youth Writers Association says that having young writers events has helped him develop as a poet. “To be a writer in your early teens is entirely different from being a writer beyond high school, because by then you’re arguably a fully formed person… but while we are all figuring things out, finding a group who are in the same boat as you makes you feel understood and at home. There are so many seats at the table!”

For Bram, writing is juggled with school and work and keeping an eye on younger siblings. He describes his reaction to the festival as “hyped”, as we talked in the gallery hosting some of the YWF events. “I’m just so happy to be here.” 

‘He mea tautoko nā ngā mema atawhai. Supported by our generous members.’
Liam Rātana
— Ātea editor

By featuring younger writers, as well as being for young people, the YWF could open the door to more diverse representation. “There’s such a need for young writers who are starting off, people who think ‘I’m not sure that I can claim to be a writer’ to find encouragement,” says Cheuk, who thinks that arts events need to be creating for people in every age group, not just middle-aged and older people in urban centres. “The YWF team do outreach at universities and schools, they got the word out in a really grassroots way.” 

Cheuk’s hope is for more of these events, to nurture young artists from around the country. Speaking to her a week after the festival ended, she sounds tired but thrilled. “There was so much conversation and connection people didn’t anticipate – it’s so cool to be part of.”

You can find out more about New Zealand Young Writers Festival here and Verb Wellington here.

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Lyndsey Fineran is the new director of The Auckland Writers Festival (Image: Archi Banal)
Lyndsey Fineran is the new director of The Auckland Writers Festival (Image: Archi Banal)

BooksNovember 15, 2023

‘Mary Beard Wikipedia’d the plot to Medea’: Lyndsey Fineran’s best author encounters

Lyndsey Fineran is the new director of The Auckland Writers Festival (Image: Archi Banal)
Lyndsey Fineran is the new director of The Auckland Writers Festival (Image: Archi Banal)

Welcome to The Spinoff Books Confessional, in which we get to know the reading habits and quirks of New Zealanders at large. This week: Lyndsey Fineran, artistic director of Auckland Writers Festival.

The book I wish I’d written

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke. The strange, labyrinthine world she builds – at once otherworldly, and also very real – is something else. It was the last thing I read in the bizarre year of 2020, when I was feeling completely spent and not up for using my brain for anything beyond Netflix. It completely fired me back up and made me fall back in love with fiction, creativity… everything. I wish I had as big a brain as Susanna Clarke clearly does, but I’ll very happily settle for wandering the strange halls she creates.

Everyone should read

Whatever they want! The idea of people feeling guilty about their TBR piles, or bad about not having read X or Y yet makes me feel cross. Life has so many demands, structures and “shoulds”; reading is a space to delightfully ignore all that. Rebellious curiosity for the win.

Favourite encounter with an author

Festival life throws up many of these! Seeing Martin Amis and Richard Ford leave joke gifts for each other with the hotel concierge in what appeared to be a long-running bit between them. Watching Hilary Mantel walk into the Green Room and exclaim “My two Henrys are here!” upon seeing Damian Lewis and Nathaniel Parker in the same room. Seeing Mary Beard Wikipedia-ing the plot to Medea moments before going into an on-stage debate about it (if Mary Beard has to do it, it should make us all feel better). Hearing Toni Morrison speak live on the day Maya Angelou passed and offering the most beautiful tribute. Spending an afternoon with the late travel writer Jan Morris in her home in Wales packed with a life-worth of books and travel mementoes. I could be here for a while…

The book I want to be buried with

To be honest, I’m more likely to be buried by books, which anyone who has witnessed how I organise my desk or hard surfaces in my home can attest to … but when I think seriously of books I’d like to be with at the end, it would probably be a big anthology of travel and memoir writing by brave and creative minds I admire.

I know that’s somewhat of a cop-out of an answer but what I particularly loved about that afternoon with Jan Morris was seeing her content at home after a life rich with experiences, travels and words. I think returning to a nest and being happy in an armchair reading of others’ adventures while happily tired and content from your own would be a nice way to wrap things up.

From left to right: The book Lyndsey Fineran wishes she’d written; the book that made her laugh; and the book that made her cry.

The book that made me laugh

Percival Everett’s The Trees. At once a completely unflinching look at some of humanity’s darkest parts, and one of the funniest books I read in years. The New York Times review summed it up well when it said you: “cover a laughing mouth with one hand and stifle a gasp with the other”. I remember that very physical, visceral reading experience and the constant push / pull between two very different states and reactions. It all adds to the squirm Everett knows he’s putting his reader through. It’s such a skill.

The book that I pretend to have read

Pride and Prejudice, because people get mad when I mention I have never made it through it. I know there is more at play in it, I just can’t make myself care about books where one of the main plot drivers is whether people will get married. Don’t come at me.

The book that haunts me

I love dark reads. Samanta Schweblin’s Fever Dream, Mariana Enriquez’s Things We Lost in the Fire, Sayaka Murata’s Earthlings, Markus Z Danielewski’s House of Leaves, Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House, most things by Cormac McCarthy, some Stephen King all are favourites. But one line that particularly spooked me is actually from To Kill a Mockingbird, when the kids stumble in Boo Radley’s yard and you get the line “Someone in the house was laughing…” It’s not a scary read, but that one line genuinely still gives me a shiver whenever I think about it.

Best food memory from a book

I love reading about food in books – various moments in Audrey Niffenegger’s The Time Traveller’s Wife have stuck in my brain, and Bryan Washington and Caleb Azumah Nelson are both so brilliant at capturing food in fiction. But I think childhood reads have the edge here in terms of strength of memory. The BFG with its snozzcumbers and frobscottle springs to mind, and I don’t know many people, regardless of their age, who wouldn’t turn down a go at a Harry Potter Great Hall feast.

From left to right: the book Lyndsey Fineran pretends to have read; one of the books that haunts her; one of the books with a strong food memory.

The book that made me cry

I’m not a big crier at books, but I felt very emotionally invested in Barbara Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead. The extreme ups and downs of Demon’s story, of course, but also Kingsolver’s controlled fury about the ravages of the opioid crisis on her Appalachian community, and the truly evil behaviour of Big Pharma in the name of profits. Demon’s story could have felt exploitative in the hands of someone else but Kingsolver’s deep knowledge and empathy with her community, paired with her sadness and fury at the utter waste of life at the hands of these big corporations is all there in among the affecting twists of turns of the bildungsroman.

The best thing about reading

So many: being able to indulge your curiosity, getting to live endless lives in one, getting moments of stillness in a busy life. And as a woman, getting to do something solo and that’s completely for you – that still feels somewhat radical to me.

But the thing I always come back to is discovery. You genuinely never know where that next read might take you, what thought or memory it might trigger, new perspective it prompts you to consider, what it might lead you to read or talk to someone about next, or where it might physically take you. I’m quite the extreme example of that (books brought me literally to the other side of the world), but regardless of the scale, giving yourself over to the journey / the ride of it all holds real magic. (Please know how much it pained me to write ‘journey’ there, but it is one).

It also why I love the book festival world so much: you can see much of these discoveries, these ripples happening in real time. That’s magical.

The best place to read

I moved into my own place for the first time in my late 20s after many years of group and joint living, and getting uninterrupted hours in a big armchair or reading in the bath until the water ran cold was total bliss. Regardless of life’s next chapters, I’ll always hold that period of fierce independence and happy solitude very fondly in my mind.

I spent a weekend on Great Barrier Island recently, and got to read in a hammock under the stars. That was pretty great too.

What are you reading right now?

So many great things. Bird Life by Anna Smaill, The Bone Tree by Airana Ngarewa, Better the Blood by Michael Bennett, an excellent memoir Do You Still Have Time for Chaos by Lynn Davidson, Tusiata Avia’s new poetry collection Big Fat Brown Bitch and Lauren Groff’s The Vaster Wilds. And like many women of my generation, I’m listening to the audiobook of Britney Spears’ memoir The Woman in Me. We knew the 90s weren’t a great time for women but ooof…

The next Auckland Writers Festival | Waituhi o Tāmaki will take place over 14 – 19 May, 2024.

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