The Game of our Lives

Niki Harré and the Infinite Game: an invitation to live differently

Discourse, Season 1Going West Festival27 August 2020Psychology, The Infinite Game, Competition, Values, James Carse, Philosophy, Niki Harré, Laila Harré

Love, blood and betrayal

Greg McGee on his epic novel The Antipodeans, in conversation with journalist David Larsen

Discourse, Season 1Going West Festival25 August 2020Foreskin's Lament [play], New Zealand Masculinity, Toxic Masculinity, Rugby, All Blacks, World War Two, Italy, Venice, Alix Bosco, David Larsen, Greg McGee

Working Class Heroes

Poets Serie Barford and Glenn Colquhoun celebrate their working class roots as part of a train journey west called the Oblivion Express.

Performance, Season 1Going West Festival20 August 2020The Going West Oblivion Express Steam Train, Poetry, Working Class, West Auckland, South Auckland, Te Reo, Glenn Colquhoun, Serie Barford, Cherie Barford

Rewi Alley: Chinese Revolutionary

Author Elspeth Sandys talks to Matt Nippert about the search for her cousin, Cultural Revolutionary Rewi Alley.

Discourse, Season 1Going West Festival18 August 2020China, Communism, Chinese Cultural Revolution, Gung Ho Movement, Gung Ho Cooperatives, Hong Kong, Uighurs, Weeger People, Rewi Alley, Elspeth Sandys

Buller’s Birds Re-imagined

For the first time in 150 years, Geoff Norman re-imagines and revises Buller’s Birds of New Zealand, with the exquisitely reproduced water-colours by JG Keulemans, the most renowned ornithological artist of the 19th century.

Season 1, DiscourseGoing West Festival13 August 2020

Here Comes That Childhood Pond Again

This session brings together poet, writer, actor and playwright Peter Bland and poet, blogger, and anthologist Paula Green to traverse the world of childhood, children’s poetry and writing with warmth, wit and word-play.

Discourse, Season 1Going West Festival11 August 2020Poetry, Children's Poetry, Writing for Children, Childhood, The Night Kite, When Gulls Fly High, Flamingo Bendalingo, Peter Bland, Paula Green

Tracking the Vernacular

Marilyn Waring on the theme of Tracking the Vernacular at the Going West Books and Writers Festival 2002 Gala Night opening.

Oratory, Season 1Going West Festival6 August 2020Cultural Identity, Pākehā, Feminism, Economics, G-7, Group of Seven, Marilyn Waring

Where the Rēkohu Bone Sings

In her prizewinning novel Where the Rēkohu Bone Sings Tina Makereti confronts the complexities of cultural heritage, the past and the present, and Moriori, Māori and Pākehā identity.

Discourse, Season 1Going West Festival4 August 2020Chatham Islands, Rēkohu, Dendroglyphs (tree carvings), Moriori, Ethnicity, Where the Rēkohu Bone Sings, Historical Fiction, New Zealand History, Tina Makereti, Selina Tusitala Marsh, Murray Gray

My Life With Flying Nun

Roger Shepherd in conversation with John Campbell discussing Roger’s memoir In Love With These Times: My Life With Flying Nun Records

Discourse, Season 1Going West Festival30 July 2020Flying Nun Records, Music in New Zealand, New Zealand Music Industry, Dunedin Bands, The Clean [band], Memoir, Roger Shepherd, John Campbell

Worlds Coming Together in Aotearoa

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.

Discourse, Season 1Going West Festival28 July 2020Te Ao Māori, Biculturalism, Hongi Hika, Thomas Kendall, Anne Salmond, Moana Maniapoto

Phillip Mann and Ecological Sci Fi

Phillip Mann, described as an Ecological Science Fiction writer, talks writing and ecology and of being absorbed in the landscape

Discourse, Season 1Going West Festival23 July 2020Writing Process, Publishing, Gollancz Publishers, Science Fiction, Ecological Protection, Ecology, Philliip Mann, David Larsen

What Lies Beneath: Memoir and Memory

In her book What Lies Beneath, novelist, short story writer, scriptwriter and playwright Elspeth Sandys shares her voyage into memoir and its complex relationship with memory.

Discourse, Season 1Going West Festival21 July 2020Memoir, Memory, Adoption, Fiction Writers, Maurice Shadbolt, Elsepth Sandys

Tekoteko Cradled in Loving Arms

Witi Ihimaera reads from his memoir Native Son, with sonic accompaniment by the multi-instrumentalist Kingsley Spargo.

Performance, Season 1Going West Festival16 July 2020Witi Ihimaera, Kingsly Melhuish, Māori legends, memoir

Fiona Kidman and This Mortal Boy

Fiona Kidman in conversation with Karyn Hay about Albert Black the ‘Milk-Bar Murderer’.

Discourse, Season 1Going West Festival14 July 2020Dame Fiona Kidman, Karyn Hay, Albert Black, ‘The Jukebox killer', Teenage Delinquency, Moral Panic, 1950s New Zealand

The Man Who Ate Lincoln Road

Jesse Mulligan interviews Steve Braunias about his book, The Man Who Ate Lincoln Road, exploring the fast-food joints on New Zealand’s second busiest road.

Discourse, Season 1Going West Festival12 July 2020Lincoln Road, Henderson, West Auckland, Fast-Food, Steve Braunias, Jesse Mulligan, Food

Small Holes in the Silence

Bill Manhire reads a selection of classic New Zealand poems, with accompaniment by jazz ensemble Norman Meehan, Hannah Griffin and Blair Latham

Performance, Season 1Going West Festival9 July 2020Poetry, Music, Bill Manhire, Norman Meehan, Hannah Griffin, Blair Latham, New Zealand Poetry, Jazz, Piano, Saxophone

Reflections and Recollections of a White Native

Historian Michael King reflects and recollects on what it means to be a White Native of New Zealand, of being a Pākehā now.

Oratory, Season 1Going West Festival7 July 2020Michael King, Tainui Stephens, Pākehā, Identity, New Zealand History

Stephanie Johnson Holding the Line

Stephanie Johnson performs a literary satire about neoliberalism, including her parody caricature of tauiwi, the ‘National Party Poet Laureate’ Amanda Tauiwi Reinhardt Carlton.

Oratory, Season 1Going West Festival5 July 2020Stephanie Johnson, Book Festivals, Douglas Orator, comedy

The poetry of Anne Kennedy

In 2014 Anne Kennedy was selected as the Going West Books and Writers Festival Curnow Reader, a gala night honour bestowed each year on a poet of prominence. Kennedy reads from her book The Darling North, which won the 2013 New Zealand Post Book Award for poetry.

Performance, Season 1Going West Festival2 July 2020Poetry, Anne Kennedy, Allen Curnow, A Loop in Lone Kauri Road, The Darling North

Maurice Gee reads from Going West

Maurice Gee reads from his novel Going West, as he stands on the platform of Henderson Station, the very spot which inspired the novel in 1992.

Performance, Season 1Going West Festival30 June 2020Going West, Henderson, Maurice Gee, recital