Going West Audio

Science fiction writer Phillip Mann, in conversation with journalist and sci fi fan David Larsen, discusses his writing process, the influence of the New Zealand landscape on his work, and the story of having his extraordinary science fiction novel The Disestablishment of Paradise published.

He describes this novel as 'a vindication of love'. Despite 40 years of writing, Mann revealed an astonishing fact to the Going West audience - this was the first time he'd ever been invited to a book festival, his first time sitting at the podium talking about his books in either the UK or New Zealand. In this enlightening conversation, he reveals why that might be.

The Disestablishment of Paradise is an epic tale of love and destruction on a strange planet called Paradise. It is concerned with ecological protection and was, in part, written in response to the horror Mann felt about the destruction of the Amazonian rain forests and other ecological disasters such as that in the Gulf of Mexico.

He hoped the book would serve as a warning, a wake-up call. In writing it he went back to a technique he had used in other works; a story-teller who can stand aside from the action and comment on it, thus allowing irony and discussion.

Mann established the first University Drama Dept at a New Zealand university, worked in the theatre, had a stint in the New China News Agency in China and is a teacher, theatre director and the author of numerous science fiction novels.

In her striking work of creative nonfiction What Lies Beneath, novelist, short story writer, scriptwriter and playwright Elspeth Sandys shares her voyage into memoir and its complex relationship with memory.

At Going West in 2015, Sandys was joined in conversation by old friend and Festival founder Murray Gray.

Eloquent and humorous, she talks of her search for an emotional truth, uncovering the story of her birth parents, reimagining the past and the power of the landscape.

Elspeth declares that she is fascinated by what we forget, and that who we are is largely conditioned by what we forget as much as what we remember.

Elspeth Sandys has had many names. Born Frances Hilton James in 1940, she became Elspeth Sandilands Somerville on the occasion of her adoption into the prominent Dunedin Somerville clan at the age of nine months. The circumstances of her birth and adoption, and their impact on her childhood, are the subject of the first volume of her memoir, What Lies Beneath.

While Elspeth was happy among the ebullient and welcoming Somerville clan, she had a difficult relationship with her adoptive mother, who was frequently hospitalised with mental health problems. Elspeth’s search for her birth parents did not begin until much later in her adult life. What she discovered after an exhaustive search provided answers that were both disturbing and, ultimately, rewarding. What Lies Beneath is a searing, amusing, and never less than gripping tale of a difficult life, beautifully told.

The author of nine novels, two collections of short stories, numerous plays and adaptations for the BBC and RNZ and scripts for film and television, in 2006 Elspeth was made an Officer of the NZ Order of Merit for Services to literature.

Acclaimed New Zealand writer Witi Ihimaera launched his memoir Native Son at Going West in 2019. He gave a powerful and emotional reading from the book, with sonic accompaniment by the multi-instrumentalist Kingsley Spargo. 

At Going West, we were extremely honoured to host the launch, for what was the second installment of Ihimaera’s planned three-part memoir. 

To mark the occasion, he read an evocative passage drawing on ancient Māori legend and wrestling with the trauma of his teen years.. 

Musical polymath Kingsley Spargo provided a rich, multi-layered soundscape to accompany the reading, with diverse techniques on both taonga puoro and orchestral instruments, mixed with innovative use of digital processing.

The session was introduced by Harriet Allan from Penguin Random House.

Witi Ihimaera is of Te Whānau a Kai, Te Aitanga a Māhaki, Rongowhakaata, Tūhoe, Te Whānau ā Apanui and Ngāti Porou descent. He was the first Māori to publish a novel, Tangi, in 1973. He has subsequently gone on to become one of New Zealand’s leading writers. He is passionate about writing Māori stories and creating opportunities for them to be shown not only in print but also in theatre and on film. The first installment of his memoir, Māori Boy, won the 2016 Ockham Award for the best non-fiction work. His play, All Our Sons, won six Wellington theatre awards. He is currently writing the third volume of his memoir.

Dame Fiona Kidman’s award winning novel This Mortal Boy, about the life and death of the real life ‘jukebox killer’ 18 year old Albert (Paddy) Black, has been described as remarkable and compelling. It is a masterpiece from one of New Zealand’s finest writers. In conversation with broadcaster and writer Karyn Hay, she discusses the story of Albert Black and his place in New Zealand’s social history. 

A prolific writer and national treasure, Kidman has often written about outsiders trying to navigate a conformist society. This Mortal Boy mines this same rich vein, delving into Black’s short life and his 1955 murder conviction and execution which sat at the centre of a widespread moral panic. Ultimately, his execution led to a tide of disgust which resulted in the abolition of the death penalty for murder in New Zealand.

Dame Fiona Kidman writes novels, short stories, poetry and memoir. She has published more than 30 books, of which several are in translation in other countries. Her novel, All Day at the Movies, won the New Zealand Heritage Prize for Fiction in 2016,  and was long listed for the International Dublin Literary Prize. This Mortal Boy won the 2019 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards Acorn Foundation Fiction Prize, the NZ Booklovers Award, the NZSA Heritage Book Award for Fiction and the Ngaio Marsh Award for Best Crime Novel. Her home is in Wellington.

Karyn Hay is an award-winning novelist: her debut novel Emerald Budgies won the NZSA Hubert Church Best First Book Award in 2001. She is a Frank Sargeson Fellow and is currently a literary advisor to the Frank Sargeson Trust. Her last novel The March of the Foxgloves, was a No.1 bestseller on the New Zealand Fiction list.

Journalist, media host and food critic Jesse Mulligan interviews journalist, literary editor and anti-food-snobbery advocate Steve Braunias about his book, The Man Who Ate Lincoln Road. 

In 2016, Braunias set himself a challenge: to eat at, and write about, every fast food  outlet on Henderson’s Lincoln Road. Once the centre of the West Auckland wine industry, Lincoln Road has changed vertiginously through the decades, mirroring wider social changes across New Zealand. So who served the best food? Who served the worst? Is the rise of fast food a sign of society’s fall? What does it all mean? What did Braunias learn, if anything, from his quixotic endeavour?

Asked by Mulligan why he did this project [and wrote the book], Braunias described it as “a book about West Auckland…Henderson’s the best!” and called the project a “revelation of the goodness of people”. In the course of his dining, and this interview, the author reveals his fondness for the characters he meets along the way and his sadness at the urban homogenisation of Henderson.

Braunias describes the idea for the project as “blazingly original”, even though he paid for all the food himself.

Steve Braunias works as a journalist and columnist and books editor. He is the author of ten books, including Scene of the Crime,  How to Watch a Bird, and Madmen.

Jesse Mulligan hosts the daily afternoon show on RNZ National, before biking up to TV3 where he presents The Project each night at 7pm. He's also a restaurant critic, with a column in the New Zealand Herald’s Viva, in which he reviews Auckland's newest restaurants. 

Mulligan’s  reviews don't often cross over with Steve Braunias's list of eateries on Lincoln Road, although the two men both dined (separately) at one restaurant and came away with very different accounts of the experience.

The poems performed, in order, are:

• Rain by Hone Tuwhare 
• Warehouse Curtains by Bill Manhire
• Wild Iron by Allen Curnow - By kind permission of Tim Curnow
• Blue Rain by Alistair Campbell - Copyright © the Estate of Alistair Campbell
• I Met a Man by Janet Frame - By kind permission of the copyright owner The Janet Frame Literary Trust.
• Buddhist Rain by David Mitchell
• Yellow Room by David Mitchell
• 1950s by Bill Manhire
• Making Baby Float by Norman Meehan

Music and poetry are almost always part of the opening night of Going Wets, and this performance from 2017 brought the two together in a remarkable set of spoken and sung poetry and jazz - Small Holes In The Silence.

Live on stage in Henderson, Bill Manhire reads a selection of classic New Zealand poems with accompaniment by a jazz ensemble including Norman Meehan on piano, Hannah Griffin on vocals and Blair Latham on saxophone.

While the performance takes its name, Small Holes In The Silence, from Hone Tuwhare’s beloved poem Rain, Bill Manhire notes that “New Zealand’s most famous, most loved, poem, owes itself to Spike Milligan”, as Tuwhare drew inspiration for the line from Milligan’s poem There Are Holes In The Sky.

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Permission to set to music the poem I Met a Man from The Goose Bath (2006) by Janet Frame was granted courtesy of the copyright owner The Janet Frame Literary Trust. 

The Goose Bath has been reprinted in Storms Will Tell: Selected Poems by Janet Frame (Bloodaxe Books, 2008).

In 1999 historian Michael King updated his earlier book Being Pākehā (1985)  with a new publication - Being Pākehā Now: Reflections and Recollections of a White Native. No one had written anything like it. It was a controversial and ground-breaking publication and like most of King’s books, hugely popular. Twenty years on, the conversation started by King is just as relevant today. The session is introduced by Michael King’s friend and colleague the pioneering broadcaster Tainui Stephens.

Michael King’s contribution to the study of NZ Aotearoa history is enormous. He was one of New Zealand's leading historians and biographers. In 2006 he was named one of 100 most important New Zealanders that have ever lived. He published more than 34 books and won a wider range of awards for his books, journalism and television work,  than any other New Zealand writer. His awards include: The Prime Minister’s Award for literary achievement, Montana Medal for non-fiction (twice), The MontanaBook Awards Reader’ Choice (twice), Review of the Year (twice). He was a Robert Burns Fellow and held the Katherine Mansfield Memorial Fellowship.

His last publication, The Penguin History of New Zealand, has sold more than 200,000 copies and is widely considered to be the definitive history of New Zealand. His work in literary biography, particularly Wrestling With the Angel, his Janet Frame book received great critical acclaim. He was a frequent commentator on bicultural relations and helped Pākehā to understand what it is to be Pākehā and to understand, appreciate and value tikanga Māori.

At the very pinnacle of his career he and his wife were killed in a car accident.  

Michael was a stalwart supporter of Going West appearing in multiple sessions throughout our first decade.  

In this session King laments that New Zealand history is not compulsory in schools, something that is only just happening 20 years later.

“Michael King’s contribution to New Zealand society and culture has been incomparable. In his recording of the history of our country and its people he leaves us all a legacy of lasting worth.” 

- William Taylor

“Michael King - through his writings, his scholarship and his generous spirit - has made us understand more clearly what it is to be a New Zealander. And ultimately, his life has made us better New Zealanders. We all mourn his passing.” 

- Peter Biggs, former Chair of Creative New Zealand.

In 2014 Anne Kennedy was selected as the Going West Books and Writers Festival Curnow Reader, a gala night honour bestowed each year on a poet of prominence. 

Anne speaks of what poet Allen Curnow’s work means to her as both a reader and a writer, commenting that his work grappled with the particularity of place, of history and imagination.  

Appropriately she begins with Curnow’s much-loved poem The Loop in Lone Kauri Road and follows with two narrative poems from her book The Darling North, which won the 2013 New Zealand Post Book Award for poetry.  

Reading the poem, The Darling North, and Hello Kitty Goodbye Piccadilly, Kennedy’s style is lyrical, haunting and masterful. With great eloquence and cadence, she explores themes of love, loss, the land, searching for place and feeling out of place, the past and present, and of ‘here-ness’. It is a magnificently crafted performance by one of New Zealand’s finest living poets.

Anne’s recital of The Loop in Lone Kauri Road by Allen Curnow is released here by kind permission of Tim Curnow, Sydney, the copyright owner of the poem.

This recording is from the second Going West Festival in 1997, but in some ways it is where it all began. What co-founder Murray Grey envisioned, and pitched to fellow founders Naomi McCleary and Bob Harvey, was simple: Maurice Gee reading from his novel Going West, on a train as it travelled west.

Gee’s novel Going West, which gave the festival its name, was the Goodman Fielder Watties Book Awards winner in 1993 - just one of his astonishing 13 major New Zealand book awards

In this archival recording, Gee reads the now-famous passage from early in the book that describes the train ride between Loomis and Auckland. In Gee’s work, Loomis is the fictional town modeled on Henderson in every possible way other than in name.

His reading for the live crowd, by the very tracks he’s describing, gives the passage the same barrelling momentum of the old trains, rattling past familiar Auckland landmarks with their social myths and legends.

Maurice Gee remains the patron of the Going West Festival.