Auckland Libraries

Not many people are aware that the greatest collection of books and manuscripts of the celebrated French novelist and playwright Alexandre Dumas outside of Paris is housed at the Auckland Central Library as part of Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections. Dumas’s most recognized works include The Three Musketeers; The Man with the Iron Mask; and, The Count of Monte Cristo and his works are still enjoyed by readers and movie goers to this day. There is no doubt that Dumas and his works maintain an enduring fascination for the modern audience and reader. In this interview Haunui Royal talks to Kate de Courcy, who recently retired from Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections and who for many years was responsible for overseeing the Reed Dumas Collection. Tune into the next episode to learn about Frank Reed the Dumas collector. Current catalogue reference: https://tinyurl.com/bxe4c473 To access this collection or to find out more please email: specialcollections@aucklandcouncil.govt.nz And ask about the

For this second instalment, Dedee chats to Yolanda and Harriet from Na Noise, about their debut album Waiting For You, which won the Junior Taite Prize (also known as the “Baby Taite”) this year. We chat a bit about their writing process, being asked to cover a Reb Fountain song at the Taite Awards, and playing their first Level 2 seated gig at Whammy bar after the first Covid lockdown. We also discuss their two very cool music videos, and why they only feature in one of them. All tracks used in this podcast are from Na Noise’s album Waiting For You, released on 1:12 records, November 20, 2020. Tracks: - Sun Stone Air - Waiting For You - Dance With Me - Na Noise Music videos: Waiting For You - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJw2zOPyUeo&ab_channel=NaNoise Dance With Me - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VaxBLE305TY&ab_channel=NaNoise Items chosen from the Auckland Libraries collection: Book: Yé-Yé girls of '60s French pop / by Jean-Emmanuel Deluxe ; [foreword by Lio] Deluxe, Jean-Emmanuel, 1970-

Last year linguist Susan Verran and historian David Verran transcribed the journals of Isaac Rhodes Cooper, which he wrote in the 1850s. In this talk, Susan and David describe the challenges of transcribing the young British officer’s journals and what they learned about Cooper's several excursions around the upper north island (from Taupō to the Bay of Islands). The original journals (NZMS 56a) are available to view online https://bit.ly/IsaacRhodesCooper Isaac Rhodes Cooper later used these accounts as the basis for his book ‘The New Zealand settlers guide…with a digest of the constitution and land regulations https://bit.ly/NZSettlersGuide Image: Isaac Rhodes Cooper sketch of Auckland Province.

During her 32 years at the helm, publishing doyenne, Jean Wishart, transformed the Woman’s Weekly into a highly successful magazine – one that reflected the real lives and interests of its female readership. In this talk, Jenny Lynch, former Weekly editor and author, tells the personal story behind this remarkable woman. Under the covers: the secrets of a magazine editor https://bit.ly/SecretsofaMagazineEditor New Zealand woman's weekly : 70 years from pavlovas to prime ministers https://bit.ly/NZWW70Years

This week our reading has taken us from Roman times all the way through to the year 2024. Join Alison and Ineka on the Literary Lounge time-travellator to find out more.

Award winning writer Greg McGee, best known for his play Foreskin’s Lament, came to Going West in 2015 to talk on writing, rugby, toxic masculinity, female pseudonyms, life in Italy and his novel The Antipodeans - an intergenerational tale of love, blood and betrayal. For this conversation, he is joined by well-known and well-read journalist David Larsen. McGee, an almost All Black, is known for works that have challenged the social norms of masculine behaviours in New Zealand, most notably his hugely popular play Foreskin’s Lament. First performed in 1981, his dark drama set in a rugby club changing room stripped New Zealand masculinity naked and began the demise of the once popular slur "Whaddarya?” McGee went on to be a successful screenwriter, writing based-on-true story dramatisations and mini-series based on the Erebus disaster and the infamous Lange Government, as well as contributing to several popular New Zealand TV shows including Marlin Bay, Street Legal, and Orange Roughies. He also penned th

Working class heroes and poets Serie Barford and Glenn Colquhoun celebrate their working class roots as part of the Going West Oblivion Express as it steams to Helensville Station. Passengers along for the ride were entertained and charmed by this witty pairing of two of New Zealand’s finest performance poets. It is pure working class gold, sprinkled with a West Auckland flavour, as they celebrate their whānau, friends, and community with poems about ceramic swans, the knicker factory, bullrush, and bog filled cars, grapevines and the alchemy of Assid Corban’s orchids. Both Barford and Colquhoun are long-time friends of the Going West Writers Festival and have been regular guests throughout the years. Serie Barford is a poet and short fiction writer of European and Polynesian descent, with a background in performance poetry. She has published four poetry collections: Plea to the Spanish Lady (Hard Echo Press, 1985), Glass Canisters (Hard Echo Press, 1989), Tapa Talk (Huia, 2007), and Entangled Islands (An

Rewi Alley, a quiet bloke from Canterbury, a dabbler in poetry, a farmer, fireman and soldier went "to go and have a look at China" and ended up becoming the architect of one of the world's greatest labour movements. In her book A Communist in the Family: Searching for Rewi Alley, Rewi's cousin Elspeth Sandys presents a layered biography of the Kiwi who became a Chinese hero and "the great friend of the people of China". New Zealand has Special Nation Status in China entirely because of Rewi Alley and his work. In conversation with New Zealand Herald investigative reporter Matt Nippert, Sandys recounts her 2017 visit to China to trace her cousin’s life there. On that visit, she was told there were more statues of Rewi than Mao Zedong. While she thought it an exaggeration, it certainly seemed possible in China’s North West. Intrigued by what he had read about China, Alley left New Zealand in December 1926 to see the Chinese revolution up close. He would stay for 60 years, becoming one of China's best-known

150 years on from the original landmark study of New Zealand’s birdlife, Buller’s Birds were re-imagined and J G Keulemans re-discovered in Geoff Norman Buller’s Birds of New Zealand. This revision and revisiting of Walter Buller’s original ornithological study includes exquisitely reproduced water-colours by JG Keulemans, the most renowned ornithological artist of the 19th century. In this Going West session from 2013, Geoff Norman is joined in entertaining and enlightening conversation by writer, satirist, ornithologist and journalist Steve Bruanias, author of How to Watch a Bird. Many of the birds reproduced in Norman’s book are now extinct; all we have of them are snippets in oral history, scraps of texts, a few feathers and the odd stuffed carcass in a Museum. And, of course, Walter Buller’s book. It was incredibly popular, especially from the second edition, due to Keulemans’ illustrations - though these were poorly reproduced through the printing process of chromolithography. Norman’s new edi

This session from 2013 is titled after the first line of Peter Bland’s poem The Pond, Here Comes that Childhood Pond Again. The conversation between poet, writer, actor and playwright Peter Bland and poet, blogger, and anthologist Paula Green traverses the world of childhood, children’s poetry and writing with warmth, wit and word-play as they frame the world through a poet’s eye. In what is (as noted by Green) a rare opportunity to talk about children’s poetry at a book festival, Bland reads from his books The Night Kite and When Gulls Fly High and Green from Flamingo Bendalingo: Poems from the Zoo written in conjunction with 50 school children. Peter Bland moved to Wellington from his native Yorkshire and emerged on the local poetry scene alongside James K Baxter and Louis Johnson, as a member of the Wellington Group. Peter has published three collections of poems for children: The Night Kite, When Gulls Fly High, and in 2018 The Happy Garden. He has also worked as a character actor, winning Best Actor

Marilyn Waring delivered the Gala Night oratory at the Going West Books and Writers Festival in 2002, speaking to the theme Tracking the Vernacular. Made a Dame Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit in 2020, and a former politician, scholar, feminist, farmer, author, academic, and activist for female human rights and environmental issues , Waring is an exceptional and inspiring New Zealander. Her keynote address is wise, compassionate, insightful and witty as she tracks what is her personal vernacular, a vernacular partly expressed through her writing. The address is part memoir and part love letter to Aotearoa. This appearance was the first time Marilyn Waring had been invited to speak about her writing in New Zealand - but wouldn't be the last. The 15th woman elected in New Zealand and one of only four women in Parliament at the time, her nine tumultuous years as a National Party MP boiled over in 1984 when she backed the Labour Opposition's nuclear-free policy, prompting then-Prime Minister Robe

In her prizewinning debut novel Where the Rēkohu Bone Sings Tina Makereti confronts the complexities of cultural heritage, the past and the present, and Moriori, Māori and Pakeha identity. The novel is a compelling, powerful and haunting work. In 2014, Makereti came to Going West to discuss her book live on stage with colleague, scholar and poet Selina Tusitala Marsh - who began the session with a poem penned for Tina and her extraordinary novel. The session was an insightful, thoughtful and inspiring one, delving into the process behind the writing. Tina Makereti writes essays, novels and short fiction. Her most recent novel is The Imaginary Lives of James Pōneke (longlisted for the Ockham NZ Book Awards Fiction Award, 2019) and optioned by Taika Waititi’s Piki Films for development. Alongside Witi Ihimaera, she is co-editor of Black Marks on the White Page, an anthology celebrating Māori and Pasifika writing. In 2016, her story, Black Milk, won the Commonwealth Writers Short Story Prize, Pacific reg

Roger Shepherd, the founder of iconic Kiwi independent record label Flying Nun, joins lifelong music fan, journalist and TV personality John Campbell to share the story of his life with the independent and much loved music label that has been taking the sounds of Aotearoa New Zealand to the world for nearly 40 years. For a worldwide community of music fans, Flying Nun is one of the most iconic independent record labels from outside the mainstream, defining a particular voice and sound of New Zealand. In 2016, the label’s founder penned his memoir In Love with these Times: My Life with Flying Nun Records. We invited Roger along to Going West for an animated and good-natured discussion with Flying Nun fanboy (and award winning journalist) John Campbell. The session begins with a heartfelt monologue from John, recounting his own discovery and deep love for “the Dunedin Sound”, as Flying Nun’s iconic output has often been called. Roger’s dry humour, honesty and humility shine through in the course of the con

Dame Anne Salmond and Moana Maniapoto take to the Going West stage for a kōrero on Salmond’s landmark publication Tears of Rangi: Experiments Across Worlds. They discuss the convergence of Te Ao Māori and Western thinking in Aotearoa, helping us to inform our future together. Salmond’s book explores how lessons from the past can inform our future, providing us new ways of tackling global challenges. It illuminates how the power of transformative thinking, combining Te Ao Māori and Western world views, can bring about a pioneering approach to living in Aotearoa informed by our bicultural past. In this warm, intelligent and provocative conversation with kindred spirit, musician and documentary filmmaker Moana Maniapoto, Salmond recounts her own life and experiences as a Pākeha academic seeking to better understand and connect to Te Ao Māori. The book - and this conversation - pose a significant question: can different worlds converge in Aotearoa? It explores the difficulties, challenges and successes since

Science fiction writer Phillip Mann, in conversation with journalist and sci fi fan David Larsen, discusses his writing process, the influence of the New Zealand landscape on his work, and the story of having his extraordinary science fiction novel The Disestablishment of Paradise published. He describes this novel as 'a vindication of love'. Despite 40 years of writing, Mann revealed an astonishing fact to the Going West audience - this was the first time he'd ever been invited to a book festival, his first time sitting at the podium talking about his books in either the UK or New Zealand. In this enlightening conversation, he reveals why that might be. The Disestablishment of Paradise is an epic tale of love and destruction on a strange planet called Paradise. It is concerned with ecological protection and was, in part, written in response to the horror Mann felt about the destruction of the Amazonian rain forests and other ecological disasters such as that in the Gulf of Mexico. He hoped the book woul

In her striking work of creative nonfiction What Lies Beneath, novelist, short story writer, scriptwriter and playwright Elspeth Sandys shares her voyage into memoir and its complex relationship with memory. At Going West in 2015, Sandys was joined in conversation by old friend and Festival founder Murray Gray. Eloquent and humorous, she talks of her search for an emotional truth, uncovering the story of her birth parents, reimagining the past and the power of the landscape. Elspeth declares that she is fascinated by what we forget, and that who we are is largely conditioned by what we forget as much as what we remember. Elspeth Sandys has had many names. Born Frances Hilton James in 1940, she became Elspeth Sandilands Somerville on the occasion of her adoption into the prominent Dunedin Somerville clan at the age of nine months. The circumstances of her birth and adoption, and their impact on her childhood, are the subject of the first volume of her memoir, What Lies Beneath. While Elspeth was happy a

Dame Fiona Kidman’s award winning novel This Mortal Boy, about the life and death of the real life ‘jukebox killer’ 18 year old Albert (Paddy) Black, has been described as remarkable and compelling. It is a masterpiece from one of New Zealand’s finest writers. In conversation with broadcaster and writer Karyn Hay, she discusses the story of Albert Black and his place in New Zealand’s social history. A prolific writer and national treasure, Kidman has often written about outsiders trying to navigate a conformist society. This Mortal Boy mines this same rich vein, delving into Black’s short life and his 1955 murder conviction and execution which sat at the centre of a widespread moral panic. Ultimately, his execution led to a tide of disgust which resulted in the abolition of the death penalty for murder in New Zealand. Dame Fiona Kidman writes novels, short stories, poetry and memoir. She has published more than 30 books, of which several are in translation in other countries. Her novel, All Day at the Movi

Acclaimed New Zealand writer Witi Ihimaera launched his memoir Native Son at Going West in 2019. He gave a powerful and emotional reading from the book, with sonic accompaniment by the multi-instrumentalist Kingsley Spargo. At Going West, we were extremely honoured to host the launch, for what was the second installment of Ihimaera’s planned three-part memoir. To mark the occasion, he read an evocative passage drawing on ancient Māori legend and wrestling with the trauma of his teen years. Musical polymath Kingsley Spargo provided a rich, multi-layered soundscape to accompany the reading, with diverse techniques on both taonga puoro and orchestral instruments, mixed with innovative use of digital processing. The session was introduced by Harriet Allan from Penguin Random House. Witi Ihimaera is of Te Whānau a Kai, Te Aitanga a Māhaki, Rongowhakaata, Tūhoe, Te Whānau ā Apanui and Ngāti Porou descent. He was the first Māori to publish a novel, Tangi, in 1973. He has subsequently gone on to become one of

Journalist, media host and food critic Jesse Mulligan interviews journalist, literary editor and anti-food-snobbery advocate Steve Braunias about his book, The Man Who Ate Lincoln Road. In 2016, Braunias set himself a challenge: to eat at, and write about, every fast food outlet on Henderson’s Lincoln Road. Once the centre of the West Auckland wine industry, Lincoln Road has changed vertiginously through the decades, mirroring wider social changes across New Zealand. So who served the best food? Who served the worst? Is the rise of fast food a sign of society’s fall? What does it all mean? What did Braunias learn, if anything, from his quixotic endeavour? Asked by Mulligan why he did this project [and wrote the book], Braunias described it as “a book about West Auckland…Henderson’s the best!” and called the project a “revelation of the goodness of people”. In the course of his dining, and this interview, the author reveals his fondness for the characters he meets along the way and his sadness at the urban

Music and poetry are almost always part of the opening night of Going West, and this performance from 2017 brought the two together in a remarkable set of spoken and sung poetry and jazz - Small Holes In The Silence. The poems performed, in order are: Rain by Hone Tuwhare Warehouse Curtains by Bill Manhire Wild Iron by Allen Curnow - By kind permission of Tim Curnow Blue Rain by Alistair Campbell - Copyright © the Estate of Alistair Campbell I Met a Man by Janet Frame - By kind permission of the copyright owner The Janet Frame Literary Trust. Buddhist Rain by David Mitchell Yellow Room by David Mitchell 1950s by Bill Manhire Making Baby Float by Norman Meehan Live on stage in Henderson, Bill Manhire reads a selection of classic New Zealand poems with accompaniment by a jazz ensemble including Norman Meehan on piano, Hannah Griffin on vocals and Blair Latham on saxophone. While the performance takes its name, Small Holes In The Silence, from Hone Tuwhare’s beloved poem Rain, Bill Manhire notes th