As I noted last week, this Thursday evening in Wellington there is a great event being held featuring three of New Zealand's most prominent modern-day crime writers: Paul Cleave, Neil Cross, and Vanda Symon. It's fantastic to see some growing support for local crime/thriller writing. Hopefully plenty of people will head along.
While it is great that Kiwi audiences pack out events for the overseas crime writers that do visit, traditionally we haven't been that good at having events with New Zealand writers (outside of the occasional festival event or book launch). So it's great the Book Council organising this Murder They Wrote evening, and giving readers a chance to meet and listen to some of our own top quality crime writers - who in all honesty more than hold their own against many of the big name international bestsellers we buy in droves. Hopefully this event can lead the way for more local crime writing-centric events, large or small, over the coming months and years.
Murder They Wrote will be held at Café L’Affare, College Street, Wellington at 6 pm on Thursday 27th May. Tickets are $16 ($14 for NZ Book Council members) and can be purchased at the Information Desk, Wellington Central Library.
Hopefully lots of people head along, and show some support for our great local crime writers. Having interviewed all three, I can promise you it will be an entertaining and fascinating evening - they are all very interesting people that aren't short of an opinion or two. So if you are in the Wellington area, make sure you head along!
You can read my 9mm interviews with Paul Cleave here, and with Vanda Symon here. You can my review of Neil Cross's latest psychological thriller CAPTURED, and Paul Cleave's latest BLOOD MEN here.
Have you read any of Paul Cleave, Vanda Symon, or Neil Cross's books? What do you think? What questions would you want to ask them at such an event?
Craig - Thanks for letting everyone know of this event. Wish I lived close enough to attend; I'm sure it'll be fantastic.
ReplyDeleteI live in Dunedin so I won't be there, though it sounds awesome!
ReplyDeleteI know Vanda, she is delightful, and I absolutely love her books. I've read all three and own two of them. I can't wait for Bound the fourth in the series to hit the shelves.
I have to admit I've never read Cross or Cleave and only discovered Vanda through a library run met-local-authors event. Perhaps we should do more to promote and raise the profiles of our NZ authors (not just in crime but across the board). Events like this are a good start.