WORD Christchurch - Autumn Season Events Announced

Following the enormous success of last year’s WORD Christchurch Writers & Readers Festival, we are very excited to announce our Autumn Season line-up, in association with the Auckland Writers Festival, bringing six stellar authors to Christchurch from Tuesday – Sunday 17 May. Our important subscribers hear it here first!

David Walliams — comedian, actor, television celebrity and author — is the biggest UK children’s author to debut this century. His books include Mr Stink, Gangsta Granny, The Boy in the Dress, Billionaire Boy, Ratburger and Awful Auntie. David Mitchell is the author of six novels, including Cloud Atlas and Black Swan Green which have all received or been in the running for major literary awards. Mitchell’s latest breathtaking multi-genre novel The Bone Clocks was called “recklessly ambitious” by the Guardian and was longlisted for the Man Booker. Helen Macdonald’s memoir H is for Hawk, about her attempt to overcome grief by training a goshawk, has taken the literary world by storm, winning both the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-fiction and the Costa Book of the Year Award, as well as appearing on nearly every ‘best of 2014’ list.

Nick Davies’s book Hack Attack: How the truth caught up with Rupert Murdoch is a nail-biting account of an investigative journalist’s quest. When the Royal Editor of The News of the World was imprisoned phone-hacking, Davies was convinced there was more to the story and began a painstaking investigation that ultimately exposed a world of crime and cover-up, of fear and fervour — reaching all the way to the top. Xinran has published several acclaimed books about China, including her seminal book about women's lives, The Good Women of China. Since then she has written a regular column for the Guardian and appeared frequently on radio and television. Her latest book is Buy Me the Sky: The remarkable truth of China’s one-child generations. Steve Braunias’s Madmen: Inside the weirdest election campaign ever lit up the best-seller charts over summer, reprinting three times. Based on the diaries Braunias filed every day during the election for Metro magazine’s online site, Madmen is a surreal and comic account of the campaign. It’s political journalism, but not as we know it.

Tuesday 12 May: Helen Macdonald, 6pm; Nick Davies, 8pm Wednesday 13 May: Steve Braunias, 6pm Thursday 14 May: David Walliams 6pm; Xinran, 8pm Sunday 17 May: David Mitchell, 6pm       For more information, session times and ticketing details, please visit wordchristchurch.co.nz   **********************************************************************************************************