Going West Books & Writers Festival 2009

The festival ran from 17 August - 26 September at various venues in Waitakere City

Going West's Literary Weekend "By Buy Bye the Book" was held at the Titirangi Memorial Hall on Friday 12 September to Sunday 14 September 2009. This event brought together writers and performers from around the country to debate, discuss and entertain. 

Programme Director, Murray Gray and Waitakere Arts Manager Naomi McCleary

Going West Publicist Sally Woodfield and Waitakere Community Arts Coordinator, Julie Nash taking registrations for Poetry Slam

Going West Coordinator Anna Fomison

Books, Poetry and Performance at Going West Books and Writers Festival 2009

A world premiere performance, the popular Book Market and Poetry Slam, a line-up of leading contemporary writers and a free children's storytelling day featured as part of Going West Books and Writers Festival 2009.

Exhibitions, seminars, workshops and the Wordsmiths touring programme in schools also feature in the Festival which took place in Waitakere City during August and September.

For the 14th year, the Festival celebrated the work of New Zealand writers and performers.

The Going West Festival started with the Wordsmiths programme which sends writers into Waitakere schools to talk about their work and inspire students in their own writing. This year, film writer Zia Mandviwalla, fiction and non-fiction writer John Parker, journalist Nick Bollinger and poet Courtney Meredith headed into schools for a three week programme which ran until Friday 4 September.  Over 1,000 young people were exposed to these successful wordsmiths.

The 2009 Festival theatre season featured Indian Ink Theatre Company's superb solo play Krishnan's Dairy at the Glen Eden Playhouse Theatre from 26-29 August.  The shows were extremely popular and the season was a sell-out with people being turned away at the doors.

Books of all shapes, sizes, age and condition came to the fore at the Book Market on Saturday 5 September at the Titirangi War Memorial Hall. The best second-hand and rare booksellers in the region were there along with demonstrations and displays, great local music, snacks, espresso and on-the-spot market valuations. A new feature for 2009 is the Going West Book Auction in association with Bethunes@Webbs.

Those who enjoyed the drama of performance, put their rhyme on the line and slammed with the best at the Sixth Annual Going West Poetry Slam held on Saturday 5 September at the Titirangi War Memorial Hall.  A riteous night of entertainment stretching from the ribald to the serious.

The Going West Literary Weekend "by Buy Bye The Book" was a memorable occasion that brought together leading contemporary New Zealand weiters featuring a premiere of the new poetry/music performance North:South, a FREE afternoon celebrating Waitakere writing, a one-night-only comedy performance with Te Radar and a special Los Angeles guest, the Black Panther Emory Douglas!

This year's keynote speaker was writer, comedian, amateur historian and raconteur Te Radar who entertained and enlightened.  Following was the world premiere of North:South- inspired by Glen Colquhoun's epic poetry cycle of the same name, where the gods and goddesses of Maori and Celtic mythology meet, clash and fall in love.  The poet and the combined musical might of Richard Nunns (taonga puoro) and Bob Bickerton (celtic musician) brought this riotous tale to life.

We heard from Kate DeGold whose novel The 10pm Questions won the NZ Post's Young Adult Fiction and Book of the Year Awards and was runner up in the fiction category and won the Readers Choice Award at the 2009 Montana Book Awards.

Distinguished Professor of English, Brian Boyd shone a light on the origins of storytelling from Homer's Odyssey to Dr Seuss' Horton Hears a Who!, and we gained an insight into the extraordinary life of Dorothy Butler.  Poets Bill Manhire, Harry Ricketts, Kevin Ireland and Selina Tusitala Marsh shared their work while celebrity chef Richard Till talked about championing the food we grew up on and rustled some very New Zealand tucker.

On Saturday, the FREE afternoon, Westside Forever, celebrated West Auckland writers and featured a behind the scenes look at the West's very own award-winning TV show Outrageous Fortune with co-creators James Griffin and Rachel Lang together with Robyn Malcolm (Cheryl) and Simon Prast.

Discussion followed with the editors or WEST - the history of Waitakere, Ruth Kerr and Finlay MacDonald; Sandra Coney introduced her new book Piha - Guardians of the Iron Sands, tracing the first 75 years of the Piha Surf Life Saving Club and its "proud tradition of (volunteer) guards as tough as its surf"; Titirangi's Lyn Loates and Michele Powles joined critic David Larsen to talk about writing and their first novels, Butterscotch and Weathered Bones respectively; and, at cocktail hour, we launched a new book The Ironbound Coast - Karekare in the Early Years, edited by Mayor Bob Harvey and published by Peter Dowling of Oratia Media.

Saturday night featured a special one-night-only performance of Te Radar's Eating The Dog - a comedy show which celebrates the lives of the misfits, the failures and those who died trying.

Two very special sessions featured on Sunday: Panther Rapp featuring Polynesian Panther Party members Will 'Ilolahia and Dr Melani Anae together with special guest Emory Douglas* of the US Black Panther Party (*as part of the Elam Artist in Residence programme at The University of Auckland); and Give Peace a Chance: A celebration of New Zealand's anti-nuclear stance with Phil Dadson of From Scratch and the screening of Gregor Nicholas' Cannes/Midem Visual Music Awards Grand Prix winning film Pacific 321 Zero.

The final event of Going West Books and Writers Festival 2009 was the annual Storyfest - a free day of events for children held on Saturday 26 September at Kelston Community Centre. This year's theme was 'Coastlines - Living at the Edge'.  Storyfest is supported by Waitakere Libraries and celebrates the place of storytelling in the lives of our children,