Verb Readers & Writers Festival 2021

Update from 19 October 2021: Due to Covid level 2 restrictions we have made some changes to event locations and times. We have a small number of cancellations. All ticket holders have been notified. All event information on our website is up to date. You can view the updated timetable for the Festival weekend on 6 - 7 November here.

NOTE: All LitCrawl, Newtown Sunday Stroll and Free events are registration only. You must be registered to attend these events. This is so we can manage social distancing in our venues and keep everyone safe. You can read more on the LitCrawl page, Newtown Sunday Stroll page, and Ticketing page for detail.

This year’s festival is inspired by an idea that is, at its heart, quite radical: the idea that words can affect change in the material world. When we come together to honour stories, writers, books and ideas that mean something to us — as people, as a country, and as part of a global conversation — then we’re inviting understanding, knowledge and shared experiences that might just help us define our next steps.

The books, characters, writers and questions that this festival brings together is an exploration of the many and fluid things that ‘coven’ can lead us to. We delve into the breadth and the depth of the female text, as Irish guest author Doireann Ní Ghriofa phrases in her genre-defying book A Ghost in the Throat. We ask about faith with Hirini Kaa, Ian Harris and Danyl Mclauchlan; we consider our dreams with Manisha Anjali; celebrate mātauranga Māori with Hinemoa Elder; and the life of Helen Kelly with Rebecca Macfie. We talk about family, memory and truth with Charlotte Grimshaw.

We consider mental health and family with Meg Mason; and speculative Cli-Fi fiction with Clare Moleta. We’re rejoicing in characters who linger in our minds long after reading with Rebecca K Reilly and Fleur Beale and Steph Matuku. We are welcoming Atua Wāhine with Ataria Sharman and Ngahuia Murphy. We’re thinking about hidden workforces, makeup, midwives, music, and much more with Sam George-Allen and her book Witches: What Women Do Together. 

We will rage and party with Michele A’Court and Tessa Waters. We will knit with Nadine Anne Hura, Whiti Hereaka, Renée, and Anahera Gildea. We celebrate legacies of feminist bookselling with Tilly Lloyd, Carole Beu and Marion Castree; and we subvert ableism with re-worked fairy tales by Crip the Lit. And we will even come to your house with a bespoke series of special events.

This festival is dedicated to the challenging, the subversive, the corrupted, the triumphant, the magical, the angry, the domestic, the solitary, the outsider, the aesthete, the anchorite, the scholar, the goddesses. It is dedicated to the witches.

Welcome to the coven. 

Thank you to our brilliant partners and funders who make this festival, and all of our mahi, possible:
Creative New Zealand, Wellington City Council, Manatū Taonga Ministry of Culture & Heritage, The National Library of New Zealand, The Dominion Post, Vic Books, Naumi Hotels Wellington, HUIA Publishers, Bowen Galleries, BlueStar, Culture Ireland, New Zealand Community Trust, Nikau Foundation, New Zealand National Commission for UNESCO.

Verb Readers & Writers Festival 2021 Guest Curators

Verb Readers & Writers 2022 Staff

Verb Readers & Writers Festival Staff
Production manager: Natasha James

Verb Trustees: Catherine Robertson, Brannavan Gnanalingam & Emma Marr