Writers & Readers Week at the Festival

Writers and Readers for all ages 
With two special youth-focused days during the week, there’s plenty to enjoy for the next generation of Writers and Readers. On Friday 9 March an address from explorer and environmentalist Tim Flannery will head Schools Day – a series of three talks for secondary students. Other Schools Day events are Magic Realism from Kiwi writer Elizabeth Knox and American fantasy slipstream writer Kelly Link; and Terrific Characters, Dystopian Worlds from award-winning New Zealand young adult fiction writers Bernard Beckett and Jane Higgins. Teachers can make Schools Day bookings directly through the Festival website.



Sunday 11 March sees three family sessions at Young Writers and Readers Day at Downstage Theatre, with the rare opportunity to experience three of New Zealand’s most-loved children’s writers - Lynley Dodd, Gavin Bishop and Margaret Mahy.
Our two great Writers and Readers multi-passes, the Bookmark Pass and Take Five Pass, are on sale now. These multi-passes offer generous discounts to Embassy and Downstage sessions, with the Bookmark Pass also entitling holders to a preferential booking period from Friday 27 January 2012. Public bookings for Embassy and Downstage sessions open on Friday 3 February.  Tickets to all other Writers and Readers Week events are available through Ticketek.


SAVE WITH A WRITERS AND READERS MULTI-PASS 
Buy your Bookmark or Take Five Pass before the end of January and you could win a massive stack of Writers and Readers books! 



A literary crime wave 
There’s nothing like a good crime novel to get the mind ticking and the pulse racing. Bestselling Norwegian author Jo Nesbø heads up a crime strand that features some of the finest exponents of this most popular of literary forms. Scottish novelist Denise Mina will discuss her works set on the mean streets of Glasgow and three of New Zealand’s own crime writers – Paul Cleave, Vanda Symon and Paul Thomas - will talk taking crime into a distinctly local setting.
Don’t miss the Wellington debut of the feature film Headhunters, based on the Jo Nesbø novel of the same name, screening at 8.30pm on the same evening as Nesbø’s Embassy Session.

Photo - VUP.