Meng Foon talks with author Chris McDowall, and contributors Nadine Anne Hura and Veronika Meduna about an Atlas of Aotearoa in this highlight from the 2020 New Zealand Festival Writers' programme.

Listen to Chris McDowall, Nadine Anne Hura and Veronika Meduna talking to Meng Foon about the Atlas of Aotearoa in this highlight in this highlight from the 2020 NZ Festival of the Arts writers' programme

We Are Here - An Atlas of Aotearoa is the extraordinary product of years of work that offers an in-depth view of Aotearoa as a place and as a people. It asks you to step back from Google or Apple Maps and take a look at the world around you: your people, your places, your whenua.

Race Relations Commissioner Meng Foon talks with creator Chris McDowall and contributors Nadine Anne Hura and Veronika Meduna about this collision of data, design and heartfelt analysis. What does an atlas allow us to see when it presents information in startlingly new ways?

And why is the word data disliked so much by the editor, given that so much of the book is given over to data visualisation?

About the speakers

Chris McDowall

Chris McDowall trained as a geographer with a focus on cartography and human geography. He has worked variously as a cartographer, environmental scientist and manager at the University of Auckland, Landcare Research, the National Library of New Zealand and Figure.NZ. The common thread through his career is a desire to make the nation's data easier to find and interpret.

Nadine Anne Hura

Nadine Anne Hura (Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Hine) has had essays published in e-Tangata, The Spinoff, The Pantograph Punch and Ora Nui. She grew up in South Auckland and now lives in Wellington with her three children.

Veronika Meduna

Veronika Meduna is an award-winning science writer and broadcaster, with a focus on climate change. She is currently the New Zealand editor for The Conversation, a not-for-profit media organisation providing evidence-based current affairs analysis. Before joining The Conversation, she hosted 'Our Changing World', a weekly science programme on RNZ.

She has written five books on science, most recently Towards a Warming World, published by Bridget Williams Books, and Science on Ice: Discovering the Secrets of Antarctica, published by Auckland University Press. Veronika contributes to other publications in New Zealand and internationally, including the New Zealand Geographic, New Scientist and Deutsche Welle.

Meng Foon…

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details