The 8th New Zealand Young Writers Festival

By Young Writers Festival | Posted:

The 8th New Zealand Young Writers Festival is set to rock Dunedin, City of Literature, to its
belletristic foundations. This year’s festival includes several scintillating events designed by guest curator Nathan Joe including Dirty Talk, True Crit, Slam Champ Sandwich, and Playwrights Aft3r 25. Nathan joins the festival off the back of the world premiere of his “firecracker of a production” (NZ Herald) Scenes from a Yellow Peril, developed during Nathan’s time as the 2019 NZYWF Writer in Residence. 

Also returning to the NZYWF is the multi-talented Rebecca Hawkes, who will Chair Climate Poetry Here and Now, a panel discussion featuring young writers from Dunedin and (via Zoom) sister City of Literature, Seattle. Rebecca co-edited the recently published (AUP) No Other Place to Stand, an anthology of climate change poetry, also developed during her stint as a NZWYF Writer in Residence in2020. Rebecca is involved in several other events, such as facilitating her workshop Lessons in Love Sweet Poetry. She’ll perform as one of the Show Ponies, a celebratory blend of poetry, cabaret, and fashion created by Freya Daly Sadgrove. This is the first South Island outing for the Ponies which exploded into existence in a sell-out event in 2019 hailed by Motif Poetry as “a watershed moment for poetry in performance in Wellington”. The stable for the NZYWF includes Sinead Overby (Ngāti Porou, Te Whānau a Kai), Vanessa Crofsky, and essa may ranapiri (Ngāti Wehi Wehi, Ngāti Raukawa, Te Arawa,Ngāti Pukeko, Clan Gunn) who will be joined by special guests from Ōtepoti.

This year’s NZYWF writer in residence is Ben Wilson. Ben, an award winning playwright from Tāmaki Makaurau, will spend one month in the Robert Lord Writers Cottage working on a new play Edward Maybe Definitely Remembers. This solo theatre show was inspired by his year-long journey going through EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) – a form of psychotherapy. In addition to teaching playwrighting at The Auckland Performing Arts Centre, Ben works for the Mental Health Foundation and will deliver a NZYWF workshop Creating Safe Spaces When Writing About the Hard Stuff. Ben will also feature in Playwrights Aft3r 25, a panel discussion including fellow playwrights Amy Wright and Nathan Joe discussing if, and how, their professional lives changed after winning Playmarket’s b425competition.

Local additions to the line-up include Dunedin’s own rising stars Late Bloomers who will premiere a rehearsed reading of You, Me, Her, and the Sea, a drama by local playwright Amy Wright. Hailing all the way from Canada but now living in Ōtepoti, Claire Lacey encourages experimentation and play in an introduction to sound poetry, Sound It Out: A Sound Poetry Workshop. Some festival favourites return such as the Otago Poetry Slam where avid local slammers battle it out for bragging rights and prizes including the right to represent Otago at Nationals. With a three round knock-out format and short punchy poems, slams are always popular with audiences, some of whom will be randomly selected to be judges for the night. The NZYWF has partnered with Motif Poetry to run the slam which will be hosted by their Education Director and former UK Slam champion Sara Hirsch. Sara ranked third in the World Slam Championships in 2014 and won the European Slam in Madrid in 2016. Those wanting to develop slam skills can attend Sara’s Slam Poetry Workshop. These events are accented with Slam Champ Sandwich where Sara will be joined by other slam champions, Nathan Joe, Emer Lyons, and Eric Soakai to share anecdotes, stories, and read some of their previous winning work. Also returning to the programme are three day micro-residencies selected by Starling Online Journal for young writers. Two writers who have been previously published in Starling will spend the festival based in secret locations around the city. They finish their residency at the festival by discussing their experience in a panel discussion hosted by Starling Co-Editors Louise Wallace and Francis Cooke, and share the work they have created.

Continuing the festival’s pedigree of delivering innovative workshops is author Samuel Te Kani (Ngāpuhi, Tainui) exploring metaphor in Storytelling and Tarot Reading. Billed as a practical workshop for all lovers of the arcane art of Tarot cards, Sam has written for publications including Vice and Metro, and has recently published a collection of short stories, Please, Call Me Jesus (Dead Bird Publishing). Sex and erotica are recurring themes in their work and during the first lockdown Sam pioneered personalised erotic fiction, which became insanely popular. Sam will join some of our of other most transgressive and potty-mouthed writers including Joshiah Morgan (Kāi Tahu, Ngāti Maniapoto) to probe the erotic and abject as playgrounds for words and ideas in Dirty Talk.

The annual NZYWF is produced by the Dunedin Fringe Arts Trust and has become a firm favourite of local audiences and young writers across the country. Guest curator Nathan Joe has become a regular visitor: “What I've loved about NZYWF has been the way all writers converge in the city as a literary hub, making it far more driven by the writers themselves than the festival as an institution. It is a festival that reflects the future of literature in New Zealand, and reflects the many definitions of literature too. "

The full programme is available now on the New Zealand Young Writers website(youngwritersfest.nz) and physical copies can be found around Dunedin. The festival will kick off on 29th September at Te Whare o Rukutia, previously the Community Gallery, at 20 Princes Street.