About

Tasty morsels served up by a delectable selection of poets

Iggy McGovern, a popular participant in our 2006 festival, is back from Ireland to read from his new collection, Safe House. Iggy is Associate Professor in the School of Physics at Trinity College Dublin.

Jessica Le Bas’s first collection, Incognito, won the NZSA Jessie McKay Award for Best First Book of Poetry at the 2008 Montana New Zealand Book Awards. Her latest collection is Walking to Africa, which looks at mental health in adolescence. She lives in Nelson.

Owen Marshall is an accomplished poet as well as one of our leading short story and fiction writers and was made an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to literature. He is an adjunct professor at the University of Canterbury, which awarded him the honorary degree of doctor of letters. His second poetry collection, Sleepingwalking in Antarctica and other poems, was published this year.

Alison Wong is a poetry and fiction writer. Her poetry collection, Cup, was published in 2006 and her first novel, As the Earth Turns Silver, has been shortlisted for the 2010 NZ Post Book Awards. She has recently moved to Australia.

John O’Connor is a Christchurch poet and publisher. His latest collection is Cornelius & Co. – Collected Working-Class Verse 1996–2008. As always, Addington is the centre of O'Connor's working-class world. Its people are not caricatures or stereotypes. This is a realistic, sometimes humorous approach to the everyday life of South Christchurch

Chair: Bernadette Hall is a Christchurch poet and creative writing tutor at the Hagley Writers’ Institute.