Plenty to do this weekend!

If you are not at the Auckland Home Show and want a more literary bent to your weekend, check out the events being run in conjunction with New Zealand Book Month on the website www.nzbookmonth.co.nz


FESTIVAL OF MAORI WRITERS
The Festival of Māori Writers has been on this week in Wellington and continues through to Sunday 16 September. It is an annual event which culminates this year in the Pikihuia Awards for Māori Writers Competition (formerly E Tuhi! Get Writing Awards). These Awards are presented every two years with the finalists being published in a book, this year titled Huia Short Stories 7. This years' Māori finalists, and a selection of previous winners, will be published in Nga Pakiwaitara a Huia 4. The launch of the two books and the announcement of the 2007 winners will take place at the Pikihuia Awards ceremony at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa on Saturday 15 September.

Food for Thought - Books & Writers Weekend
Out west the place to be this weekend (September 14 – 16) is the Titirangi War Memorial Hall. As part of the Going West Writers Festival this is a stimulating weekend of conversations, discussions, readings, interviews and performance, in an 'out West' community atmosphere, with fine food and wine available. Guests and speakers include Owen Marshall, Tony Simpson, Andrew Fagan, Miranda Harcourt, and James McNeish (among many others), so this is a huge weekend. The full programme is available at http://www.waitakere.govt.nz/artcul/ae/goingwest/literary.asp

And finally (just because I feel the need to work a little of my favourite sport into the blog), I noticed Linda Vagana was one of the New Zealand identities who had added her 3 favourite Kiwi books to the site.

Linda Vagana has played at the top level of New Zealand sport for seventeen years representing New Zealand, Samoa, and Northern Force in netball. Linda has also worked at the Auckland University of Technology as the marketing co-ordinator for the Faculty of Arts. Currently she is the General Manager of Books in Homes, a charitable organisation that aims to put books into the homes of every New Zealand child who would not otherwise have access to them. Linda's favourite NZ books are The Bone People by Keri Hulme, The Kuia and the Spider by Patricia Grace and The Silent One by Joy Cowley.

Ka kite ano