About Going West Books & Writers

"Fit to Print", 1999. Writers and performers at the Going West Literary Weekend.  Photo credit: Marti Friedlander.

Going West is coordinated by the Arts Team within Waitakere City Council, with programme content designed by local resident and bookseller Murray Gray.

When Going West began 13 years ago, it was the Auckland region’s first writers’ festival. Its focus is on writers, thinkers and performers from New Zealand and the Pacific – past and present, established and emerging. Since its inception in 1996 it has attracted over 350 writers and performers to take part.

Going West takes place in August and September over a 3-4 week period across various venues in Waitakere City.

The events include a literary weekend, the family day Storyfest, a theatre season, poetry slam and rare books market.

National Radio's David Steemson interviews author Maurice Gee, Marilyn Duckworth and Maurice Shadbolt, Going West steam train journey, 1997.

The original inspiration behind the festival was the steam train journey. However, due to the double tracking of some of the Western Line and the introduction of Sunday train services, 2005 was advertised as the last year of the Going West steam train journey. But watch that space – the Arts Team and the Railway Enthusiasts Society are hoping that the journey may be part of the programme again in coming years.

The train journey was one of the festival’s defining events over its first decade. While on board the train passengers were treated to word-based performances up the Western Line from Central Auckland to Helensville and back. The idea for this event was originally hatched by Waitakere City Mayor Bob Harvey and Murray Gray. Gray elaborates:

“It came out of a desire to make literature into an event and to celebrate the train trip that Maurice Gee describes in his book ‘Going West’, which also became the name of the whole festival.” The normally reclusive Gee has appeared three times in recent festivals, one year reading an excerpt from his novel ‘Going West’ on the Henderson platform where he had not stood for 40 years. And the event has come full circle with writer C.K. Stead, another regular passenger, turning it into literature in his 1999 novel, ‘Talking About O’Dwyer’, in which he uses details of the festival’s train trip to illuminate a character’s connection to the west.

Email us with your name and address  to go onto our festival database and receive a 2008 brochure in early August 2008.

Murray Gray

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West Side Story Article — North & South Magazine (Size 352K)