Festival Gala Night: Resetting the Compass

In the Festival’s major opening night, eight exceptional writers speak to a moment in their life or work where their compass was reset – by choice or by chance; hard-won or by happenstance; early in life or in its later acts – that set them on a course truer to themselves.

Lining up to tell us about their new Norths, their True Norths, and the moments of reckoning, rebellion, resilience, reinvention, resolution or raw nerve it took to find them are:

One of Aotearoa’s most distinguished novelists Witi Ihimaera (Te Whānau a Kai, Te Aitanga a Māhaki, Rongowhakaata, Ngāti Ira and Ngāti Porou); acclaimed artist and activist Tāme Iti (Ngāi Tūhoe); grief expert and best-selling author Dr Lucy Hone; Women’s Prize for Fiction winner and New York Times best-selling author Tayari Jones; Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement-winning author of 14 novels Elizabeth Knox; #1 New York Times and Sunday Times best-selling author RF Kuang; Booker Prize-winning Canadian novelist Yann Martel; Edinburgh’s Poet Laureate and prize-winning Scottish author Michael Pedersen.

Hosted by Miriama McDowell (Ngāti Hine, Ngāpuhi).