All Tickets are Mobile Ticket Only. Mobile Tickets are like Print-at-Home tickets but instead of having to print off the tickets yourself, you can just show the barcode on your mobile phone. It is the easiest way to access tickets to your events. For more information visit Ticketmaster.co.nz/mobileticket Child Policy: Children aged under 1 will be permitted free. Provided they do not occupy a seat. 2025 marked Maggie O'Farrell's 25th year of publishing, celebrating her books including After You'd Gone, The Hand that First Held Mine, I Am, I Am, I Am, Hamnet and The Marriage Portrait. Chloe Zhao's film adaptation of Hamnet has earned eight Oscar nominations, including one for O'Farrell for the screenplay. Her new novel Land is published in June. O'Farrell joins us live from her home in Edinburgh to talk about her extraordinary year.

EPSG:4326

2. (VIRTUAL) Maggie O'Farrell

Kiri Te Kanawa Theatre

All Tickets are Mobile Ticket Only. Mobile Tickets are like Print-at-Home tickets but instead of having to print off the tickets yourself, you can just show the barcode on your mobile phone. It is the easiest way to access tickets to your events. For more information visit Ticketmaster.co.nz/mobileticket Child Policy: Children aged under 1 will be permitted free. Provided they do not occupy a seat. NZ's favourite politics podcast is back. Bringing their customary mix of insight, analysis and humour to our stage are The Spinoff's Toby Manhire, executive producer of Mata Annabelle Lee-Mather (Ngai Tahu, Ngati Kahungunu, Ngati Mamoe) and former press secretary in the Key government Ben Thomas. They offer their predictions on who will take the top seat(s) and what the road to election day will hold for the country, and those vying to lead it.

19. Gone by Lunchtime: Six Months to the Polls

All Tickets are Mobile Ticket Only. Mobile Tickets are like Print-at-Home tickets but instead of having to print off the tickets yourself, you can just show the barcode on your mobile phone. It is the easiest way to access tickets to your events. For more information visit Ticketmaster.co.nz/mobileticket Child Policy: Children aged under 1 will be permitted free. Provided they do not occupy a seat. Described as "the John le Carre of his generation" (Val McDermid), spy writer Mick Herron makes his Aotearoa New Zealand debut to discuss his unique style of espionage and political thriller, and introduce the latest instalment of his Slough House series: Clown Town. The phenomenally successful series has sold over four million copies and has been adapted into the multi-BAFTA award-winning television series Slow Horses, starring Gary Oldman.

48. Mick Herron

All Tickets are Mobile Ticket Only. Mobile Tickets are like Print-at-Home tickets but instead of having to print off the tickets yourself, you can just show the barcode on your mobile phone. It is the easiest way to access tickets to your events. For more information visit Ticketmaster.co.nz/mobileticket Child Policy: Children aged under 1 will be permitted free. Provided they do not occupy a seat. The certainties that once underpinned our geopolitical world are eroding; democracies are under strain; authoritarianism is on the rise. The panel in conversation: Canadian political commentator and author of Too Dumb for Democracy? David Moscrop and collapse risk expert and author of Goliath's Curse: The History and Future of Societal Collapse Luke Kemp.

34. A Shaken World Order?

All Tickets are Mobile Ticket Only. Mobile Tickets are like Print-at-Home tickets but instead of having to print off the tickets yourself, you can just show the barcode on your mobile phone. It is the easiest way to access tickets to your events. For more information visit Ticketmaster.co.nz/mobileticket Child Policy: Children aged under 1 will be permitted free. Provided they do not occupy a seat. Most people think grief only follows a death. But what about the heartbreak of a relationship ending? The loneliness of estrangement? Or the grief that accompanies illness, infertility or redundancy? Grief expert Dr Lucy Hone regards these as "living losses". Hone explores this silent epidemic and offers her practical tips for how we can move through life's toughest times, and better help those around us.

26. How Will I Ever Get Through This?

Waitakere Room, Aotea Centre

All Tickets are Mobile Ticket Only. Mobile Tickets are like Print-at-Home tickets but instead of having to print off the tickets yourself, you can just show the barcode on your mobile phone. It is the easiest way to access tickets to your events. For more information visit Ticketmaster.co.nz/mobileticket Child Policy: Children aged under 1 will be permitted free. Provided they do not occupy a seat. From the Far North to the West Coast, meet three authors of gripping crime thrillers in distinctly NZ settings: Zoe Rankin (The Vanishing Place), Chris Blake (Softly Calls the Devil) and Catherine Lea (The Deeper the Dead). What makes these isolated towns in some of NZ's most remote spots such fertile ground for these crime writers? Which unique characteristics of their settings did they draw upon to create their atmospheric and menacing works?

43. Small Towns, Dark Truths

Limelight, Aotea Centre

All Tickets are Mobile Ticket Only. Mobile Tickets are like Print-at-Home tickets but instead of having to print off the tickets yourself, you can just show the barcode on your mobile phone. It is the easiest way to access tickets to your events. For more information visit Ticketmaster.co.nz/mobileticket Child Policy: Children aged under 1 will be permitted free. Provided they do not occupy a seat. Full of heartbreak and hope, Florence Knapp's The Names was deemed "the best debut novel in years" by The Sunday Times and praised by Jojo Moyes, Chris Whitaker and Geraldine Brooks. The novel begins in 1987 in the aftermath of a great storm, when a woman sets out to register her son's birth. It imagines three different life paths prompted by three different names, and reflects on the decisions - big and small - that shape a life's course.

46. Florence Knapp

Hunua Room, Level 1, Aotea Centre

All Tickets are Mobile Ticket Only. Mobile Tickets are like Print-at-Home tickets but instead of having to print off the tickets yourself, you can just show the barcode on your mobile phone. It is the easiest way to access tickets to your events. For more information visit Ticketmaster.co.nz/mobileticket Child Policy: Children aged under 1 will be permitted free. Provided they do not occupy a seat. Ian McEwan is the critically acclaimed author of 19 novels, including the Booker Prize-winning Amsterdam, The Child in Time, Saturday and Lessons, as well as Atonement, Enduring Love, The Children Act, and On Chesil Beach. In this special interview live from his home in the UK, he discusses his landmark new novel, What We Can Know, which envisions a 2119 submerged by rising seas, and a society living with the consequence of climate inaction.

45. (VIRTUAL) Ian McEwan

All Tickets are Mobile Ticket Only. Mobile Tickets are like Print-at-Home tickets but instead of having to print off the tickets yourself, you can just show the barcode on your mobile phone. It is the easiest way to access tickets to your events. For more information visit Ticketmaster.co.nz/mobileticket Child Policy: Children aged under 1 will be permitted free. Provided they do not occupy a seat. Welcome to the island of Helium where Betsy lives with her balloon factory-owning family. Betsy Balloon is a rambunctious modern fable presented as a staged reading with original music and illustration based on a story by this year's Honoured Writer, Bill Manhire. Best suited for ages 5-10 years.

60. Betsy Balloon

Herald Theatre, Aotea Centre

All Tickets are Mobile Ticket Only. Mobile Tickets are like Print-at-Home tickets but instead of having to print off the tickets yourself, you can just show the barcode on your mobile phone. It is the easiest way to access tickets to your events. For more information visit Ticketmaster.co.nz/mobileticket Child Policy: Children aged under 1 will be permitted free. Provided they do not occupy a seat. On a family visit to Bokarina, fiction writer Breton Dukes (Party Boy, What Sort of Man) found the seed of a short story. But how do you make the leap from lived experience into exaggeration, invention and actual storytelling? Dukes takes you through his process of writing the story "Bokarina", revealing how he navigated the crucial decisions: what to keep, what to discard, what to heighten, and where truth ends and fiction begins.

98. Breton Dukes: Writing Fact into Fiction

Waihorotiu Room, Aotea Centre

All Tickets are Mobile Ticket Only. Mobile Tickets are like Print-at-Home tickets but instead of having to print off the tickets yourself, you can just show the barcode on your mobile phone. It is the easiest way to access tickets to your events. For more information visit Ticketmaster.co.nz/mobileticket Child Policy: Children aged under 1 will be permitted free. Provided they do not occupy a seat. Back by very popular demand - and better and smuttier than before - The Spice Salon returns to quench Tamaki's thirst. Four stellar Festival authors join host Samuel Te Kani (Ngapuhi) for late-night readings and discussions of the steamiest bits of their work for your pleasure - of the high-brow, literary variety, of course. Tony Tulathimutte (Rejection), Maria Reva (Endling), Laura Borrowdale (Dead Ends) and Joseph Trinidad (Lucky Creatures).

92. The Spice Salon

All Tickets are Mobile Ticket Only. Mobile Tickets are like Print-at-Home tickets but instead of having to print off the tickets yourself, you can just show the barcode on your mobile phone. It is the easiest way to access tickets to your events. For more information visit Ticketmaster.co.nz/mobileticket Child Policy: Children aged under 1 will be permitted free. Provided they do not occupy a seat. In May 1879, a ship with 463 Indian indentured labourers docked in Fiji. Over the next 37 years, more than 60,500 workers were sent from India to work in Fiji's sugarcane and tobacco plantations under inhumane conditions. Shana Chandra's Banjara, is two women's reckoning of their Indo-Fijian history, told over 100 years apart. Krish Naidu is the President of the Fiji Girmit Foundation NZ founded to honour Girmit histories in Aotearoa.

108. A Heavy History: Girmitiyas in Fiji

All Tickets are Mobile Ticket Only. Mobile Tickets are like Print-at-Home tickets but instead of having to print off the tickets yourself, you can just show the barcode on your mobile phone. It is the easiest way to access tickets to your events. For more information visit Ticketmaster.co.nz/mobileticket Child Policy: Children aged under 1 will be permitted free. Provided they do not occupy a seat. S. A. Cosby is one of crime fiction's hottest talents. Combining action-fuelled plots and literary depth to explore race, class, family, justice and redemption in the American South, his unique blend of Southern Noir has made him a mainstay on "Books of the Year" round-ups, Barack Obama's reading list and The New York Times bestsellers. He joins Michael Bennett (Ngati Pikiao, Ngati Whakaue) to discuss his newest book King of Ashes.

78. S. A. Cosby

All Tickets are Mobile Ticket Only. Mobile Tickets are like Print-at-Home tickets but instead of having to print off the tickets yourself, you can just show the barcode on your mobile phone. It is the easiest way to access tickets to your events. For more information visit Ticketmaster.co.nz/mobileticket Child Policy: Children aged under 1 will be permitted free. Provided they do not occupy a seat. Tayari Jones' An American Marriage became an instant New York Times bestseller, was championed by Oprah and Barack Obama, and won the Women's Prize for Fiction. Join her as she discusses her remarkable writing journey and her highly anticipated new novel Kin, which Ann Patchett described as "the kind of all-encompassing reading experience I'm always hoping to find: smart and funny and deftly profound".

83. Tayari Jones

All Tickets are Mobile Ticket Only. Mobile Tickets are like Print-at-Home tickets but instead of having to print off the tickets yourself, you can just show the barcode on your mobile phone. It is the easiest way to access tickets to your events. For more information visit Ticketmaster.co.nz/mobileticket Child Policy: Children aged under 1 will be permitted free. Provided they do not occupy a seat. Meet three writers in conversation about what it means to be a writer whose homeland - or generational homeland - is at the heart of world headlines. Ukranian-Canadian author Maria Reva of Booker Prize-longlisted Endling; Palestinian scholar Tareq Baconi, author of the memoir Fire in Every Direction; Iranian-NZ writer and artist Selina Ershadi, creator of the exhibition The Blue Dome.

85. Art in the Time of War

All Tickets are Mobile Ticket Only. Mobile Tickets are like Print-at-Home tickets but instead of having to print off the tickets yourself, you can just show the barcode on your mobile phone. It is the easiest way to access tickets to your events. For more information visit Ticketmaster.co.nz/mobileticket Child Policy: Children aged under 1 will be permitted free. Provided they do not occupy a seat. How to tell a story that will be believed? Join internationally acclaimed author Elizabeth Knox (The Vintner's Luck, The Absolute Book and most recently, Night, Ma) to learn how to build a world so that its parts fit and move together. Elizabeth will offer strategies to help writers discover what they need, and need to know, to make a believable fictional setting and to start the engine of their plot, without cheats or conveniences, and with room for happy accidents.

82. Elizabeth Knox: Plausibility, Tone and Truth

All Tickets are Mobile Ticket Only. Mobile Tickets are like Print-at-Home tickets but instead of having to print off the tickets yourself, you can just show the barcode on your mobile phone. It is the easiest way to access tickets to your events. For more information visit Ticketmaster.co.nz/mobileticket Child Policy: Children aged under 1 will be permitted free. Provided they do not occupy a seat. David Szalay (2025 Booker Prize winning author of Flesh), Breton Duke (Party Boy) and Michael Pedersen (Boy Friends) discuss their books and the vital questions they raise about what it means to be a man today.

129. No Country for Middle-Aged Men?

All Tickets are Mobile Ticket Only. Mobile Tickets are like Print-at-Home tickets but instead of having to print off the tickets yourself, you can just show the barcode on your mobile phone. It is the easiest way to access tickets to your events. For more information visit Ticketmaster.co.nz/mobileticket Child Policy: Children aged under 1 will be permitted free. Provided they do not occupy a seat. Author, publisher and creative writing teacher Dominic Hoey (1985) shares what it means to be an author outside traditional systems and industries. Covering the ups and downs of the DIY path, he'll share the tools writers need, the importance of building community and when to outsource versus staying self-reliant. Expect practical tips on funding, publishing and growing an audience. And how to grow the confidence to forge a creative path.

Auckland Writers & Readers Festival Charitable Trust

May 12, 2026

2. (VIRTUAL) Maggie O'Farrell

May 14, 2026

19. Gone by Lunchtime: Six Months to the Polls

May 15, 2026

48. Mick Herron

May 15, 2026

34. A Shaken World Order?

May 15, 2026

26. How Will I Ever Get Through This?

Auckland Writers & Readers Festival Charitable Trust