Until recently, it seemed the Verb literary festival was destined to go the same way as so many live events this Covid-cursed year. Now the festival is all go – and its director can finally breathe out, she tells Michelle Langstone. Claire Mabey did a tarot reading every day during New Zealand’s first Covid-19 lockdown. … Read more
The oldest independent literary festival in Aotearoa is putting its massive back-catalogue online. Going West’s producer James Littlewood explains why – and what’s next. February, 2020. We’d just pulled together a crack team and were poised to launch into full-blown planning when the virus hit and we went into lockdown. Suddenly, the future ceased to … Read more
Spinoff Review of Books literary editor Steve Braunias does his best to remember a drunken weekend in Wellington at 2018 LitCrawl. Crazy to feel the need to rush to a literary event – there’s always plenty of room, it doesn’t matter if you’re a tad late – so I leisurely ironed my shirt in my … Read more