Auckland Writers Festival

Still readjusting to ordinary life after five wonderful days at the Auckland Writers Festival. Huge thanks to the AWF staff and volunteers who remained helpful, cheerful and unflappable in the face of endless questions and crowds, regardless of the time of day (or night). Thanks also to the bookshop staff, presiding over those enticing piles of new books, and to the tech staff who managed lights, sound and other fancy gear with techy confidence and cool.   

Highlights for me on my first ever AWF

• Spotting other people poring over the programme from the moment of stepping onto the plane
• The non-stop buzz of conversation and activity everywhere within the Aotea Centre
• Sharing a table with complete strangers and striking up conversations within seconds (hint: all it takes is one or all of the following questions: What have you just been to see? How was it? What are you going to see next?) 
• Bumping into people I knew, often quite unexpectedly (and not just Aucklanders); meeting people who had come from Whangarei, Hamilton, Rotorua and even Queenstown, just to be there for the weekend; getting to meet writer friends and make some new ones
• Finding time to catch the Billy Apple exhibition and Lisa Reihana video installation at the Art Gallery (I know, not the Festival, but just up the road). 

And that's without starting on the sessions...

• Straight Talking at the opening NZ Listener Gala Night: eight lots of seven-minute treasure, starting with Amy Bloom's very funny account of what to do with her mother's ashes
• Atul Gawande, his compassion and wisdom and common sense, his advice to a medical student about the things you can and can't fix
• Haruki Murakami, his T-shirt and jokes about cats, his description of how he found his own unique style by writing in English and translating it back into Japanese, his story about spending four weeks in Oslo - so many fascinating stories (has someone asked him to spend four weeks in NZ??)
• Margaret Pointer starting her talk by greeting us and the Niuean members of the audience in Niuean
• Philip Ball, Atul Gawande, Charlotte Grimshaw and Xinran trying to find ways to change the world late on Sunday afternoon
• C K Stead talking about living near Frank Sargeson and Janet Frame in Takapuna
• And the work of some great chairs. I think being a chair must be even more challenging than being a presenter. You're addressing a range of people, from those who have come to hear their all-time favourite author to those who have never read of any of their work, and it's easy for audience members to be critical. I was especially impressed by Middlemore Hospital ICU specialist David Galler finishing his session by inviting Atul Gawande and the audience to toast those who work with the elderly, including the often underpaid and undervalued aged care workers.   

More highlights
Seeing bus-loads of students crowding out the Aotea Centre for the Schools Programme, and getting to meet and listen to Morris Gleitzman, Laurie Halse Anderson and Anthony Horowitz.

More thanks
To the parents, grandparents and caregivers who brought their kids in to Sunday's Family Day 
To the teachers and librarians who came up after my Schools Programme session to say how much they and their students had enjoyed it 
To the tech team in the Herald Theatre who believed that yes, I could manage the intercom in the green room, a hand-held mike, the clicker to move the slides on, and to not fall over any of the props scattered round the stage for that night's show 
To all the children who came up to get their programmes, books or bookmarks signed, or who lined up behind the mikes in the ASB Theatre to ask questions - something I would never have been brave enough to do at their age.

Favourite question 
All authors have people who have supported them - who would you like to thank? (what a thoughtful question from that young student! I loved being given this chance to publicly thank people who have helped and supported me.)

Regrets
Not being able to see everything
Not seeing Carol Ann Duffy in particular (named as their favorite session by several people) 
And the friend who has asked me to come up to the AWF for the last few years, saying I would love it, being out of town for the weekend - but at least now I realise why she has always raved about it.  

School visits and questions

I love doing school visits, especially for the questions I get asked. I often promise the students that if they ask me a question I've never been asked before, I'll write it down - one of the reasons for doing that (I don’t tell them!) is to give me some thinking time! Some questions come up frequently, but a new one can still stump me.

So thanks to students at a number of schools recently for these intriguing questions:

  

Do you like chocolate cake? (not an entirely random question, based on my book The great chocolate cake bake off)

Did you personally know the lighthouse family? (from the book Lighthouse family)

Do you plan on being an author forever?

And a similar one: do you think you will keep writing forever?

Do you have any relatives who were in the war? Have you got anything of theirs, like medals?

Did any nurses die in world war one?

Were the Turkish trenches the same as the Anzac ones?

If you could go back and stop the Anzac troops invading Gallipoli, would you?

(Answer seems obvious, but then led to an interesting discussion on the "butterfly effect")

What was your favourite part of going to Gallipoli? What was the worst part? What new foods did you try? Would you go back?

Have you ever met an Anzac?

What is your favourite colour?

What is your favourite country that you've been to?

Have you ever tried bully beef?

(I said no and I didn’t think the sort they ate back then would have been very nice, but that I had an excuse not ever to try it, or anything similar, because I'm vegetarian.)

Next question:

Why are you vegetarian?

I especially like writery questions like these:

What is the hardest book you have written?

Which is the book you have enjoyed writing the most?

What is your biggest responsibility as a writer?

What is your favourite topic for writing about?

Do you have any goals for yourself?

What do you do for writer's block?

How do you make up your characters? Is there a character like you in any of your books?

Do you do the covers of your books? Have you ever had a cover you don't like?

And this must be one of my all-time favourite questions:

Have you ever inspired any children to read?

Anzac week 2015

This was my Anzac week:

Book tour in south Taranaki: lots of great kids and librarians, library displays, the Hawera water tower lit up at night, the beach at Opunake, small town war memorials everywhere, Ronald Hugh Morrieson memorabilia!

Anzac parade, and the little children loving the red poppies, scooping up armfuls of them afterwards.

Arriving at the 5.30am dawn service at 5am and finding it already packed.
Visiting the new Great War exhibition in the old museum.
Reading messages left at our local war memorial.

Watching the dawn service at Gallipoli on the big screen, exchanging messages with last year's Gallipoli Volunteers - wonderful people (here are some of them!) - and all of us thinking about this year's Red Coats, working hard but having an amazing time!

New Anzac Day books

Some lovely books coming out in time for this year's Anzac Day. Here are two of them:

The last Anzac by Gordon Winch, illustrated by Harriet Bailey. Harriet was kind enough to answer some questions for me about the book and her beautiful illustrations, which I've posted on my Children's war books blog.



Roly the Anzac donkey by Glyn Harper, beautifully illustrated by Jenny Cooper - also reviewed here on my blog, and no 1 on the NZ children's bestseller list last week:



An unexpected hero by L.P Hansen is not an Anzac Day book as such, but it has some interesting perspectives on the idea of heroism in war. Linda Hansen shared some of her thoughts about it with me here. 



And a book that came out last year - Meet the Anzacs by Claire Saxby, illustrated by Max Berry. Claire also answered some questions for me about her work, and in return hosted me on her blog, called Let's have words. (And look at her post for 12 April - a lovely pairing in an Auckland shop window!) 

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St Peter and the Gruffalo

The only thing I knew about Julia Donaldson before going along to her talk at St Peter's last night was that she had written The Gruffalo and a slew of other appealing picture books, many illustrated by the same person (Axel Scheffler).



I didn't know that her writing career grew out of her songwriting career, or that in their younger days, she and her husband Malcolm (then a medical student, now a doctor) went busking all around England and Europe.

I've since read more about her life, including the sad and moving story of their oldest son, a much-loved but obviously challenging and difficult child.

I didn't expect the talk at St Peter's was going to be such an interactive performance, so hats off to the four audience members who so bravely volunteered (or were volunteered...) as hen, goat, pig and cow for the retelling in song of Julia's first picture book A squash and a squeeze.



Julia and Malcolm had already put on a musical show for 250 children in the morning, in the same venue, and I doubt that St Peter's will ever again witness anything to match the hilarious sight of Malcolm (as Gruffalo-fox-owl-snake) chasing Julia (as the little mouse) up and down the aisles.
(You can see a video clip of the two of them in action here.)



Introduced by John McIntyre from The Children's Bookshop in Kilbirnie, and chaired by Wellington picture writer and illustrator Ruth Paul, the rest of the session covered Julia's introduction to the world of picture books and educational publishing and how the story of The Gruffalo developed. She and Ruth also talked about the relationship between author and illustrator, especially in the mind of the public (in Germany, Julia noted, Axel's name always appears first on the cover) and her work as Children's Laureate in England, particularly her support for public libraries.

There was time for a few questions from the audience - a good one about "how do you know if an idea for a picture book is worth pursuing?" - before Julia and Malcolm performed their Gruffalo act, and two people from Huia Publishers read us the first few pages of The Gruffalo (Te Tanguruhau) in te reo Maori, one of 57 languages it has been translated into.

I had an interesting chat with the lovely Huia ladies afterwards and was intrigued to learn more about how Brian Morris went about translating the text (in fact there's a Booknotes interview with him here). Julia and Malcolm were obviously charmed by the reading and also delighted to be here soon after the appearance of Monkey puzzle in te reo (Kei hea taku mama?), also published by Huia.

You can find some lovely photos of Julia here, including one of her and Malcolm busking in Bristol.



Thursday night was gridlock night in Wellington traffic, so if you were aiming to come along and missed it, or got there late, you can also hear Julia talking to Kathryn Ryan on Nine to Noon.

What I expected from Waitangi Day at Waitangi

What I expected:

• spectacle and ceremony
• lots of loud protests
• it would be a bit intimidating
• I might feel out of place or unwelcome.

Why did I think that? I guess it was based on media representations of the day, seeing as I know very few people who have actually been there for Waitangi Day.

What it was like:

• Yes, there was spectacle and ceremony, and it was always impressive, sometimes moving, against the stunning backdrop of the bay: at dawn, with the islands silhouetted against a pale gold sky, or in the middle of the day under alternate showers of rain and bursts of bright sunshine. 
• There were protests, on Thursday outside the marae when John Key was talking and on Friday in the  Anti-StatOil  march around 3pm, but  even that was inclusive, with a woman at the back encouraging all of us who were waiting in the queue for shuttle buses to join in "for the sake of our mokopuna".

So what else was Waitangi Day in Waitangi like?

It was "no vacancy signs" at all the motels in Paihia.
It was flags flying from cars, houses and tents: the United Tribes flag and the Tino Rangatiratanga flag.
It was hundreds of people turning out for the dawn service at 5am, listening to karakia and singing hymns, some inside, some standing under a starry sky outside, kids lying under blankets.

It was families with children, grandparents with grandchildren, foreign tourists and backpackers; people in wheelchairs, or driving mobility scooters; kids in pushchairs; people having picnics, sitting on rugs, on chilly bins, on fold-up chairs, on the grass, in the shade under the trees.
It was kids climbing trees, swimming off the beach, jumping into the water off the bridge.
It was people eating, listening to music, playing cards, resting or asleep on mattresses, watching the performances on stage: people with and without sunhats, tattoos, sun or rain umbrellas; people of all backgrounds, shapes and sizes (although, unfortunately, that did show the extent of the obesity problem that we have to tackle in NZ.) 

It was catching snatches of te reo, and being able to understand some of it from my community  high school te reo classes.

There were stalls selling candyfloss, hot dogs, fruit icecreams, burgers, marinated mussels, watermelon, arts and crafts and, yes!!! coffee!!!
There were stalls for health and education providers,
a special corner of a tent for kaumatua to rest in,
a bouncy castle,
funfair rides,
bands playing on the three stages,
kaka haka groups practising before their turn on stage, and local people cheering for their own groups.

There were TV crews, waka crews and people gathered in fascination and admiration around the waka.
There were speeches, hymns, and frequent calls to pick up litter.
There were queues to buy food, to drive over the one-way bridge, to go through the Treaty House, queues for the toilets, for shuttle buses back to the car park.
There were HMNZS Canterbury and Te Kaha anchored off shore, and the Navy providing the 100 man guard and the 21 gun salute, and the Navy band keeping us amused with their funny and deft marching manoeuvres.

I guess the thing that really struck me was that when I've been to Waitangi before, it has felt like a place where we remember events that have happened in the past.
But this time, even though there were plenty of references to the events of 175 years ago, it felt like a place where things were happening now, where people journeyed to talk and discuss and protest and try to work things out.

It was great - it felt inclusive, welcoming, friendly. It felt like a time and a place to think about being a New Zealander and what that means.

In the evening, in the dark, it was the sound of celebratory haka floating up to our motel from the waka crews down on the river.

Waitangi Day: more photographs

These are photos of Oihi Bay - an empty beach, but full of history!

During my research trip  to Waitangi, I visited a lot of the sites mentioned in the book. Some of these were places I'd been to before, but some were completely new to me. 

One of these discoveries was Oihi (or Hohi) Bay. When we reached the carpark (after a long winding drive) we weren't even sure where the track went. Marsden Cross is visible if you know where to look, but we couldn't see it at first. 

But then we found the track, and the Cross, and Oihi Bay - such a beautiful spot, and nobody there except us!

 Oihi Bay is where Samuel Marsden conducted his Christmas Day sermon in December 1814. You can read more about it on pg 11 of my Waitangi Day book.