Auckland Writers Festival

Books for the very best season of all.

The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington.

Summer reissue: Madeleine Chapman wrote a book and was asked to speak about it at a writers festival. The problem was, nobody wanted to listen.

In this bonus edition of Gone By Lunchtime, the prime minister talks to Toby Manhire at the Auckland Writers Festival

Welcome back to Papercuts, our monthly books podcast hosted by Louisa Kasza, Jenna Todd and Kiran Dass.

In this startling extract from his new book, The New Zealand Wars Ngā Pakanga o Aotearoa, Vincent O'Malley explains how the decimation of Māori in Tūranga "completely eclipsed" the country's losses in Gallipoli. 

Madeleine Chapman wrote a book and was asked to speak about it at a writers festival. The problem was, nobody wanted to listen.

Sam Brooks has a transcendent experience at the part of the Auckland Writers Festival grown-ups never hear about: the school sessions.

Tatau: A History of Sāmoan Tattooing won the Illustrated Non-Fiction category at the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards last night. Here, authors Sean Mallon and Sebastien Galliot detail how the tattoos of other cultures are bleeding into Sāmoa, and vice versa. 

A saddle sore, a teal bridesmaid's dress and the Ngāruawāhia High School hall: how Marilyn Waring became the National candidate for Raglan. 

Turns out two of our most-loathed bush dwellers – supplejack and ongaonga – are at once way more annoying and way more fascinating than we gave them credit for. 

All of the books shortlisted for the country’s shiniest literary gongs at this year’s Auckland Writers Festival are boxed up in some publicist’s back room, just waiting to be shipped to YOU!!

As Wellington and Waikanae face a winter without two beloved libraries, Marion McLeod reviews The Library Book, a hymn to a library that burned. 

Playwright and Spinoff culture editor Sam Brooks talks to Val Emmich, author of Dear Evan Hansen, about the process of adapting a smash Broadway musical into a book.

Stephanie Johnson is an acclaimed, multi-award-winning New Zealand author, and also the co-founder of the Auckland Writers Festival. But could she get her latest novel published? Yeah, nah.