Fabricated Reality
9 - 11 October 7:30 pm
Once again, the third Going West Live event for 2021 is free to view online. Fabricated Reality looks at how stories draw from and reflect reality, and also fabricate new realities; for their characters, their authors and their readers. Airini Beautrais and Rosetta Allan team up with Michelle Elvy to explore characters (and especially female characters) pushed to extremes; the irrepressible Jackie Clark discusses The Aunties’ book of domestic violence survival stories Her Say with Carol Hirschfeld along with two contributors H and Te Ara, with readings by Renee Lyons; and speculative fiction writers Nalini Singh, Octavia Cade and Lee Murray discuss the strength-to-strength development of Aotearoa genre fiction with Jack Remiel Cottrell.
You can watch it right here or on YouTube (where we urge you to follow Going West for new content updates).
Saturday 9 October
7:30 pm
Dangerous Truths
Picasso wrote that art ‘is not truth; art is a lie that enables us to recognise the truth.’ Airini Beautrais’s short story collection, Bug Week (winner of the 2021 Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction) takes us deep into the dark realities of women’s lives. Rosetta Allan’s latest novel, Crazy Love, explores how relationships can push us to extremes. Both authors cut to the heart of female anger and defiance, asking — how far we should go for deplorable men? In conversation with Michelle Elvy.
Airini Beautrais is the author of four collections of poetry, and a collection of short fiction, Bug Week, which won the 2021 Jann Medlicott Acorn Foundation prize for fiction. She lives in Whanganui and holds a PhD on the subject of narrative and verse form in contemporary poetry. Photo by Tracey Grant.
Rosetta Allan completed the University of Auckland Masters of Creative Writing with First Class Honours and was awarded a Wallace Foundation MCW Scholarship. Her bestselling novels are Purgatory, and The Unreliable People (Penguin Books). Rosetta was the 2019 Creative NZ/University of Waikato Writer in Residence where she began her third novel, Crazy Love.
Michelle Elvy is a writer, editor and manuscript assessor in Ōtepoti Dunedin. Her recent books include the novel, the everrumble (2019), and her new hybrid collection, the other side of better (2021), plus the anthologies she co-edited, Ko Aotearoa Tātou | We Are New Zealand (2020) and Bonsai: Best small stories from Aotearoa New Zealand (2018). She also chairs National Flash Fiction Day and edits at Flash Frontier: An Adventure in Short Fiction.
Sunday 10 October
7:30 pm
Behind the Blinds
Jackie Clark, founder of charity The Aunties, Women of Influence Supreme Winner 2018, and editor of Her Say: Survivors of Abuse Tell Their Own Stories, in conversation with Carol Hirschfeld. This session promises to challenge stereotypes, illuminate the way forward, and honour the contribution of the survivors who have shared their testimonies of living through the lens of an abusive relationship. Excerpts from Her Say will be read by Renee Lyons
Content Warning: This session discusses experiences of family violence and abuse. Strong language is used.
Jackie Clark, a kindergarten teacher by training, founded the charity The Aunties in 2013 with the aim of working with women who are living with or have lived with domestic violence. She provides these women with material needs like clothing, food or money by fundraising, often through social media. In 2018 she was the Supreme Winner at the Women of Influence Awards. She recently edited Her Say: Survivors of Abuse Tell Their Own Stories. She lives in Manurewa, Auckland. Photo by Yellow.
Carol Hirschfeld (Ngāti Porou) has worked in news and current affairs for more than 30 years, holding numerous roles with TVNZ, TV3, Maori TV and RNZ. She received a Distinguished Alumni Award from the University of Auckland in 2017, and has served on a number of trusts and boards. She now works as Head of Video/Audio & Content Partnerships at Stuff. Photo by Liz March.
Renee Lyons is a New Zealand writer, director and actor whose work has been showcased throughout Australasia and the United Kingdom. She is the recipient of numerous accolades, including two wins at the Chapman Tripp Theatre Awards, New Zealand’s most prestigious theatre awards ceremony and an ‘Outstanding New Playwright of the Year’ nomination for her solo show Nick. Renee currently has a crime thriller TV show in development with Warner Brothers NZ. She lives in Waitākere with her partner, four-year-old twins and dog.
Monday 11 October
7:30 pm
Escape Rooms
Octavia Cade, Lee Murray, and Nalini Singh write across a multiverse of genres including Crime, Horror, Fantasy, SF, and Romance. In conversation with Jack Remiel Cottrell, these award-winning authors discuss the divide between literary and genre fiction, what makes genre writing in Aotearoa unique, and whether there will ever be a good answer to the question “It’s nice, but is it literature?”
Lee Murray is a multi-award-winning author-editor from Aotearoa|New Zealand (Sir Julius Vogel, Australian Shadows), an Aurealis and Shirley Jackson Award nominee, and a two-time Bram Stoker Award®-winner. Her work includes the Taine McKenna Adventures, crime-noir series The Path of Ra (with Dan Rabarts), and debut collection Grotesque: Monster Stories. She is co-founder of Young NZ Writers and of the Wright-Murray Residency for Speculative Fiction Writers, HWA Mentor of the Year for 2019, NZSA Honorary Literary Fellow, and Grimshaw Sargeson Fellow for 2021 for her poetry collection Fox Spirit on a Distant Cloud.
Octavia Cade is a New Zealand writer with a PhD in science communication. She likes using speculative fiction to talk about science in new and hopefully interesting ways, and has sold close to 60 short stories, several novellas, two poetry collections and a novel. She's won three Sir Julius Vogel awards, and was the 2020 visiting writer in residence at Massey University/Square Edge.
Nalini Singh is the New York Times bestselling author of the Psy-Changeling and Guild Hunter series. The first book in the Psy-Changeling series, Slave to Sensation, was named as one of the New York Public Library’s "125 books from the last 125 years that inspire a lifelong love of reading". Born in Fiji and raised in New Zealand, Nalini’s books have sold over seven million copies worldwide. She also writes contemporary romances, and she's recently stepped into New Zealand-set thrillers, the latest of which is Quiet in Her Bones.
Jack Remiel Cottrell (Ngāti Rangi) grew up in Wellington and now lives in Auckland. He specialises in writing flash fiction and received the 2020 Wallace Foundation Prize for his collection of flash and microfiction Ten Acceptable Acts of Arson and other very short stories. Jack won the Flash Frontier Winter Writing Award in 2020, was shortlisted for a Sir Julius Vogel Award, and was nominated for Best Small Fictions twice. His novella-in-flash, Latter Day Saints, was published in 2018. When he's not writing, Jack is a volunteer rugby referee. Photo by Vetiver Pictures
Stranded in Paradise, Going West’s 2021 Live season
The world has shifted. A pandemic has altered the way time and geography work here in Aotearoa, changing our physical connection to the world. Are we stranded in Paradise? Or are we reweaving the strands of our reality into something new? It’s a conversation ripe with possibility — and we’re inviting you to join it.
Going West Live brings four truly unique events to Lopdell House, Te Uru Waitākere Contemporary Gallery and the Glen Eden Playhouse. Across these iconic west Auckland venues, our most potent storytellers, musicians and performing artists will engage in oratory, discussion and performance.