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The Power
of Words
The Taranaki International Festival of the Art’s literary programme
will be hosted in the festival’s stunning temporary venue, Spiegeltent
Salon Perdu. This European “mirror tent” is
playing host to ten great New Zealand writers. Get your tickets
today to experience these authors up close and personal, in an
interactive situation.
Power of Words sessions are 60mins, no interval
Tickets Premium $15 Friends $12
 Lloyd
Jones
New Zealand/Aotearoa
Lloyd Jones is a consummate writer who has single-mindedly followed
his heart to dedicate himself to the art of writing. His
experience in journalism and life has helped to produce a rich
tapestry of work
that has become the first choice of readers across the world.
Multi-award
winning and best seller, Jones is a graduate of Victoria University.
His accolades include the 1988 Katherine
Mansfield
Memorial Fellow at Menton, the 2007 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize,
Montana NZ Book and Readers Choice Awards, Scholarship in
Letters and other
awards, and the 2007 Creative New Zealand Berlin Writers’ Residency.
Sat
1 Aug, 10am, Spiegeltent Salon Perdu
 Sam
Hunt
New Zealand/Aotearoa
New Zealand’s
best-known and loved travelling poet rambles into town with a
percolating fresh brew of writings and poems that
distill the essence of this country into potency fit to enliven
the soul.
Hunt’s poetry appeals to a wide-ranging audience
that includes thousands of school children over the decades.
His familiar tall
and rangy frame has been seen from the Cape to the Bluff and
his gifts to poetry heard far further. Awarded a QSM in 1986
for his
contribution to New Zealand poetry, this former Burns Fellow
and outstanding performer shows a rare talent that needs to be
seen to
be fully appreciated.
Sat 1 Aug, 11.30am, Spiegeltent Salon Perdu
 Rebecca
Priestley
New Zealand/Aotearoa
Author,
reviewer and columnist, Priestley is one of NZ’s leading
science writers. Editor of science anthology, The Awa Book of
New Zealand Science and co-author of Atoms, Dinosaurs & DNA:
68 great New Zealand scientists, Priestley has worked as a science
communicator
for more than 15 years. In 2006 with Veronika Meduna she co-curated,
Butterflies, Boffins and Black Smokers: two centuries of science
in New Zealand, for the National Library gallery.
Her columns,
articles and reviews have appeared in magazines, newspapers
and on Te Ara – the online encyclopedia of New Zealand.
Rebecca is currently in the final stages of a PhD in the
history and philosophy
of science, in which she is looking at NZ’s nuclear and
radiation history.
Winner of the Royal Society 2009 Science
Book of the Year.
Sat 1
Aug, 1.30pm, Spiegeltent Salon Perdu
 Harry
Ricketts
New Zealand/Aotearoa
Literary
scholar, poet and reviewer, Ricketts grew up in England, Malaysia
and Hong Kong before settling in New Zealand in 1981. He
is an associate professor in the School of English, Film and
Theatre and Media Studies at Victoria University of Wellington.
Published
across the globe, he is the author of many books including
the critically acclaimed biography The Unforgiving Minute:
A Life of Rudyard Kipling, and was a finalist in the 2005 Montana
New Zealand
Book Awards in the reference and anthology category with Spirit
Abroad: A Second Selection of New Zealand Spiritual Verse.
Ricketts’ latest book, How to Catch a Cricket Match, reflects
a life-long passion in playing, watching and reading about cricket.
Sat 1 Aug, 3pm, Spiegeltent Salon Perdu
 Hamish
Keith
New Zealand/Aotearoa
Writer,
art curator and consultant, broadcaster, media man, Keith is
considered a living taonga by many. Born in 1936 and awarded
an
OBE for Services to Art in 1981.
He was part of a group which
persuaded Len Lye to gift his works to the Govett-Brewster Art
Gallery and was an original trustee
of the Foundation. He was the original negotiator for the Te
Maori
exhibition and chaired the Arts Council for six years. Keith
has sat on this country’s leading art and heritage boards,
served as president of Actors Equity and was founding president
of the Writers
Guild.
His recent TV series and companion volume, The Big Picture,
gained critical acclaim. In 2008 his long-awaited and highly
anticipated
autobiography Native Wit was unleashed.
Sat 1 Aug, 4.30pm, Spiegeltent
Salon Perdu
 Laurence
Fearnley
New Zealand/Aotearoa
Fearnley
is a gifted New Zealand writer whose overseas experience adds
a thrilling side to her writing, her innate knowledge of the
human character and the New Zealand psyche comes through in an
edginess of style linked to her generation.
A 2007 Burns Fellow,
Fearnley has set her latest novel, Mother’s
Day, in Invercargill to complete a southern trilogy of novels
based in Central Otago and Southland.
A graduate of Victoria University with an MA with Distinction
in Creative Writing, Fearnley is a fiction writer and curator
who has
written extensively on New Zealand craft artists.
Sun 2 Aug, 10am,
Spiegeltent Salon Perdu
 Paul
Reynolds
New Zealand/Aotearoa
New Zealand’s ‘Mr
Internet’, Reynolds has been
espousing the possibilities and extent of the Internet and the
breadth of digital technology since the early 1990’s. He
is one of the most well-known and respected commentators on the
topics of information
access and technological change in NZ today. He is renowned for
his strong emphasis on community access and contribution to knowledge.
He
participates in a large number of advisory bodies including
the National Digital Library, Auckland Museum’s Board,
the Digital Strategy Advisory Group, International Academy of
Digital Arts and
Science and is a Webby Awards judge and LIAC Commisioner. He
has a reputation for making the complex intuitive and the aspirational
instrumental, and believes it is our responsibility to invent
the
future.
Sun 2 Aug, 11.30am, Spiegeltent Salon Perdu
 Te
Radar
New Zealand/Aotearoa
Living off
New Zealand’s bounteous land is a romantic notion,
only as Te Radar found out while filming the popular television
series Off the Radar, it’s never that simple. Come and
hear Te Radar flesh out his experiences which he describes in
his book
by the same
name - Off the Radar.
Clever, irreverent, and with a keen eye
for the absurd, Te Radar spins a good yarn and this session
is sure to be entertaining
as comedian, satirist, raconteur and sustainable living character
Te
Radar shares his experience that for every success there’s
got to be a few failures!
A double Qantas Media Award winner
for Best Humour Column in the New Zealand Herald, Te Radar
has one of the highest profiles
among
Kiwi comedians with top-rating shows on TV One – Homegrown
and Off the Radar.
Sun 2 Aug, 1.30pm, Spiegeltent Salon Perdu
 Nicky
Pellegrino
New Zealand/Aotearoa
Nicky Pellegrino
has blossomed from her magazine editing career to be at the forefront
of New Zealand women’s popular fiction.
Author of best-selling
novels, Delicious, The Gypsy Tearoom and The Italian Wedding,
Pellegrino’s feel-good fiction is
full of fun, food, fantasy and fornication!
Her first book,
A Wonderful Life, was Angela D’Audney’s
best-selling autobiography and was written while the broadcaster
was dying of a brain tumour.
Her novels are sold in 14 countries and have been translated
into 10 languages.
Sun 2 Aug, 3pm, Spiegeltent Salon Perdu
 David
Hill
New Zealand/Aotearoa
Based in
Taranaki, David Hill’s name and novels are known by
every teenager throughout New Zealand.
Hill is the leading male
writer of fiction for this age group, and has received multiple
accolades and awards since becoming a full-time
writer in 1982.
He is the author of several books for adults
as well, and has been published in NZ, Australia and the USA.
A versatile fiction
writer,
journalist, reviewer, playwright and children’s writer,
Hill has contributed stories, articles and book reviews to
newspapers, radio and most major New Zealand journals and
magazines.
Hill was awarded an MNZM in 2004 and the Margaret
Mahy Award for Services to Children’s Literature in
2005.
Sun 2 Aug, 4.30pm,
Spiegeltent Salon Perdu
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