Nelson Arts Festival Pukapuka Talks

Join singer, taonga pūoro musician and writer Ariana Tikao, photographer Matt Calman and local writer Nuki Takao for a kōrero about the stunning illustrated nonfiction book, Mokorua: Ngā kōrero mō tōku moko kauae – My story of moko kauae, which is a revealing and emotional account of how Ariana received her moko kauae. Held in conjunction with Kanohi Kitea, an exhibition that presents tā moko amongst tangata whenua.

Ariana Tikao grew up in suburban Christchurch in the 1970s and ’80s surrounded by te ao Pākehā. This book tells the story of Ariana exploring her whakapapa, her whānau history and her language. This is one woman’s story, but it is interwoven with the revival of language, tikanga and identity among Kāi Tahu whānau over the past 30 years.

Ariana’s journey culminates in her decision to take on Mokorua – her moko kauae – from tā moko artist Christine Harvey. After an emotionally charged ceremony that brought together whānau, young and old, for songs and tautoko, hugs and tears, Ariana writes: ‘Our whānau had reached another milestone in the decolonisation process – or, rather, in our journey of reindigenising ourselves, becoming who we always were.’

Through Ariana’s words, te reo Māori text by her hoa tāne Ross Calman, and an intimate, moving photo essay by Matt Calman, Mokorua reveals the journey of one woman reclaiming her Māori identity. Ariana will be joined by Matt and local writer Nuki Takao to kōrero about her experiences and the creation of the pukapuka.

Commune: Chasing a Utopian Dream in Aotearoa captures the spirit of the counter-culture movement in the Motueka Valley from the perspective of Olive Jones, one of its founding members.

Olive Jones was a teenager when she joined a group of hippies, idealists and subsistence farmers, determined to reject their parents’ way of life. Influenced by the counter-culture movement sweeping New Zealand in the 1970s, they purchased an idyllic farm close to Nelson. Their experiments in communal living were an attempt to achieve social, sexual and physical liberation from the rigid world in which they grew up. Ultimately, without rules and membership, their unstructured community failed to thrive and fulfil its early vision.

Jones‘s highly personal and candid memoir recalls the dreams, madness, humour and hard graft of living an alternative lifestyle in the Motueka Valley. Chaired by Kerry Sunderland.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of Witi Ihimaera’s Tangi, the first novel written by a Māori author to be published in New Zealand. Six fellow Māori writers - Emma Espiner (MC), Vaughan Rapatahana, Ruby Solly, Donna McLeod, Arihia Latham and Airana Ngarewa - join Witi at this special gala event to celebrate Aotearoa storytelling. The kōrero begins, after the mihi whakatau and a short clip from Whale Rider (the stage play) at 07:55.

To commemorate Witi’s contribution to Aotearoa literature, Penguin Books NZ have published two new anthologies of Māori writing this year: Te Awa o Kupu and Ngā Kupu Wero.

These two passionate and vibrant anthologies, which have been edited by Witi, Vaughan Rapatahana and Kiri Piahana-Wong, feature more than 80 contemporary Māori writers. Together they reveal that the irrepressible river of words flowing from Māori writers today shows us who and what we are.

It all started 50 years ago when Witi’s debut novel, Tangi, was published. A landmark literary event, it went on to win the James Wattie Book of the Year Award. Witi was just 29 years old at the time.

Revisiting the text for this special anniversary edition, Witi has added richer details and developed the nascent themes that have continued to preoccupy him over a lifetime of writing. As part of the 50-year celebration, Penguin Books NZ has also re-released Witi‘s first book, the short story collection, Pounamu, Pounamu (first published in 1972).

At this special event, Emma Espiner will facilitate a kōrero with Witi and Vaughan about Māori storytelling’s upsurge in New Zealand literature, interspersed with performances by some of the contributors to the two anthologies: Emma herself, Arihia Latham, Donna McLeod, Airana Ngarewa and Ruby Solly.

Award-winning doctor and writer, Dr Emma Espiner, discusses her stunning debut memoir, There’s a cure for this, with Arihia Latham. Together they kōrero about hurt and healing, love and loss, life and death, motherhood and medicine.

From the quietly perceived inequities of her early life to hard-won revelations as a Māori medical student and junior doctor during the Covid-19 pandemic, Emma‘s story is a candid and moving examination of what it means to be human when it seems like nothing less than superhuman will do. Her story is an exploration of hurt and healing, love and loss, life and death, motherhood and medicine. With Latham, who is a rongoa Māori practitioner, they will also explore how incorporating te ao Māori in our healthcare system could benefit us all.

Emma Ling Sidnam, Airana Ngarewa and Colleen Maria Lenihan discuss their stunning debut books, and reveal what gave them the courage to write, with Paula Morris.

Join acclaimed author and creative writing teacher Paula Morris in a discussion with the three debut authors she hand-picked as new authors she predicts will change the literary landscape in Aotearoa forever. They are writers you can’t afford not to read.

Emma Ling Sidnam’s debut novel, Backwaters, is a tender, nuanced novel about the bittersweet search for belonging. Airana Ngarewa’s debut novel The Bone Tree is a stunning coming of age story about two brothers who must learn to survive on their own in the world. With gritty lyricism, The Bone Tree gives voice to characters on the margins of society – and it considers the question of how we can best protect the ones we love. Kōhine, the short story collection by Colleen Maria Lenihan (Te Rarawa, Ngāpuhi), juxtaposes Tokyo’s salarymen, sex workers and schoolgirls with rongoā healers, lone men and rural matriarchs of Aotearoa New Zealand.

Rebecca Priestley discusses her new book, End Times, which is part memoir/part road trip exploring climate science, climate denial and belief systems, with Jude Watson.

What do the Christian right, natural health practitioners and farmers have in common? Rebecca Priestley examines this question and more in End Times, a work of creative nonfiction that interweaves two stories. In one, Priestley explores two of her teenage years, when in the late 1980s she and her best friend Maz became born-again Christians. Evangelists were preaching about the end times, convinced that the Pope was the Antichrist and the EFT-POS cards were the beginning of the 666 system.

This often dramatic experience is countered with a contemporary journey – a 2021 road trip with the same friend – to the West Coast, a part of New Zealand where the then mayor was a climate change denier, locals distrusted the Covid-19 vaccine, there were looming threats of both sea level rise and a statistically overdue massive earthquake, and conspiracy theories abounded. In the book, Priestley interrogates fake news, disinformation, conspiracy theories, science and why people believe what they believe.

Monty Soutar ONZM shares the story behind his bestselling and critically acclaimed debut novel, Kāwai: For Such a Time as This. The kōrero is facilitated by Airana Ngarewa.

Kāwai: For Such a Time As This has been in the NZ bestseller list since its launch in Sept 2022 and was shortlisted for the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction at the 2023 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. 

In this epic historical adventure by Monty Soutar, ONZM (Ngāti Porou, Ngāti Awa, Ngāi Tai ki Tāmaki, Ngāti Kahungunu) tells the story of pre-colonial Aotearoa New Zealand like it’s never been told before, drawing on both his extensive academic research as well as a series of extraordinary tohu (signs). 

Tracing the author’s own ancestral line, Kāwai: For Such a Time As This reveals a picture of an indigenous Aotearoa in the mid-18th century, through to the first encounters between Māori and Europeans. It describes a culture that is highly sophisticated with an immense knowledge of science, medicine, and religion; proud tribes who live harmoniously within the natural world; a highly capable and adaptable people to whom family and legacy are paramount. However, it is also a culture illuminated by a brutal undercurrent of inter-generational vengeance, witchcraft, and cannibalism. 

Kāwai: For Such a Time As This is the first in a series of three books the respected historian hopes will reveal the role of colonisation in shaping Aotearoa New Zealand, balanced with an honest appraisal of the country in pre-colonial times.

Caroline Barron's Golden Days and Anne Tiernan's The Last Days of Joy are both gripping novels that explore how the past can haunt us in the present. Paula Morris facilitates this gripping conversation.

We meet Barron‘s protagonist Becky when she is mourning the end of her picture-perfect marriage. As she unravels, Becky also remembers one terrifying night in 1995 that changed her life forever. When Zoe, her best friend at the time, reappears in her life, she is forced to reconsider her interpretation of what happened. 

In her bestselling debut novel, Tiernan‘s story is told by three adult siblings, including Sinead, a bestselling author struggling to write her second book. Like her brother Conor and her sister Frances, Sinead carries the scars of their mother’s alcoholism, which we learn is her response to a tragedy in their early childhood, a time they all remember differently. 

Both stories are book club-worthy page turners that raise questions about alcohol use, family, friendship and the human capacity for self-deception. When secrets surface, each character does what they can to survive but inevitably they must each reckon with the truth.

Join psychologist Alia Bojilova and keen tramper and writer Victoria Bruce as they explore resilience and their respective understanding of the mind-body connection. Chaired by Liz Price.

When she was kidnapped in Syria during a stint with the NZ Army, Alia Bojilova managed to talk her way out of captivity and has gone on to become a top performance coach. She has turned what she has learnt into a new book, The Resilience Toolkit.   

Victoria Bruce walked the 3,000 kilometre Te Araroa with her daughter Emilie to test the limits of her own resilience and reckon with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. In Adventures with Emilie, she reveals how spending an extended period connecting with nature not only helped her connect with herself and her daughter, but it also released long-repressed memories, bringing them into the light to be acknowledged, grieved, processed, and healed.

They discuss two very different approaches to achieving wellbeing, united by their respective understanding of the mind-body connection. 

Lotta Dann (Mrs D), the author of three bestselling books about alcohol, joins RNZ broadcaster Guyon Espiner to discuss - with Matty Anderson - why the odds are stacked against those who want to get off booze. Buckle up for a sobering look into how the way you drink is shaped not only by your individual choice, but also by government, media and big business.

In The Drinking Game, investigative journalist Guyon Espiner provides an incisive analysis of how our drinking culture is influenced by the government, media and big business. 

Four years ago, Espiner gave up drinking alcohol. He had been a heavy yet controlled drinker since his teens – abstaining three nights a week but making up for it the other four. One morning he woke up after a big night and decided he’d had enough and he quit – no AA, no support groups. Not drinking has given Guyon a new perspective on our relationship with alcohol in Aotearoa, and a lot of it is disturbing. 

The Drinking Game investigates the alcohol industry: the power, politics and lobbying behind our most harmful drug. Weaving together personal experience, hard research and interviews, it examines why Aotearoa New Zealand has such a heavy drinking culture, the harm it causes and how our attitudes to alcohol are changing.  

Likewise, Lotta Dann‘s 2020 book, The Wine O’Clock Myth, takes a critical look at the easy availability and widespread promotion of alcohol – including on social media – but she focuses, in particular, on how the alcohol industry specifically targets women. Dann is also the author of two personal accounts of what it’s like to go from being a boozy housewife downing a bottle of wine a day to being completely alcohol-free: Mrs D is Going Without and Mrs D is Going Within. In her latest book, she calls for regulatory changes to prevent the alcohol industry from promoting a damaging ‘Wine Mum’ culture. 

This is an audio recording of the Whakatū Nelson launch of Robbie Burton’s new memoir, Bushline, a deeply personal memoir in which he pays homage to a life shaped by the power of the landscape of Aotearoa. Hosted by Annette Lees.

Robbie Burton is a tramper and book publisher, who has had a life-long love of the Aotearoa mountains.

In this memoir he recalls a childhood in which the natural world played a central part, and led to a youthful obsession with tramping, skiing and mountaineering. Over his long career at the helm of Potton & Burton, one of the largest independent publishers in Aotearoa, he has grown this interest by publishing many significant books about the outdoors and our natural history.

Bushline is a blend of reflection about the backcountry and the people who inhabit it, the authors who write about it and the books they have produced, as well as an inside view of independent publishing in Aotearoa. Ultimately, though, it is a deeply personal book about family and belonging, and how a life has been shaped by the power of the landscape of Aotearoa.

Esteemed Aotearoa playwright and author Renée (Ngāti Kahungunu) wrote and published her first crime novel when she was 90. Blood Matters is the riveting sequel to the 2020 Ngaio Marsh finalist The Wild Card, and is another tale of Porohiwi, a small town that doesn't yield its secrets without a fight. This kōrero is facilitated by Renée's publisher, Mary McCallum.

The Wild Card was published by Cuba Press in 2019 and, after being shortlisted for the 2020 Ngaio Marsh Awards, was snapped up by Joffe Books UK in an international two-book deal for the worldwide English language rights (exclusive of Aotearoa).

Blood Matters is the second crime novel to be written by Renée, who is now 93 and lives in Ōtaki, which gives her a special insight into small town Aotearoa.

In this riveting sequel, Renée’s protagonist Puti Derrell likes running at midnight. During lockdown it was safe but now lockdown is over and Porohiwi doesn’t feel safe anymore – especially when she discovers her estranged grandfather has been murdered.

Puti's already got a lot on her mind. She’s just lost her sister Ana and as a result she's the guardian of her ten-year-old niece, Bella Rose, who wants to be a private investigator when she grows up, and the new owner of Ana's secondhand bookshop Mainly Crime. On top of that her grandfather’s murder has a strange twist – his body was left wearing a Judas mask. Blood matters takes on a whole new meaning as Puti and Bella Rose are pulled into the hunt for the murderer and for another mask that vanished some years before and might hold a clue. Once again, this is a tale of Porohiwi, a small town that doesn't yield its secrets without a fight.

In this intimate kōrero, Hinemoa Elder discusses her new pukapuka, Wawata – Moon Dreaming, which explores how living in sync with the moon can help us find a growing sense of place and harmony. Facilitated by Olivia Hall.

Dr Hinemoa Elder (Ngāti Kuri, Te Aupōuri, Te Rarawa, Ngāpuhi), author of Aroha, top-selling Aotearoa non-fiction title of 2021, shows us in this new book how to reclaim intimacy with others, with ourselves and with our planet using the energies of Hina, the Māori moon goddess.

Hina has 30 different faces to help illuminate life’s lessons – a different face and a different energy for each day of the month. And with her changing light, new insights are revealed. This book gives us the chance to connect to the ancient wisdom of the old people, who reach forward into our lives, with each of the moon’s names as their offerings. Their reminders are a source of strength in our strange modern world, where we have been stripped of much of the connection and relationships we need for our wellbeing through successive lockdowns.

This book leads you through a full cycle of the moon, to consider 30 aspects of life. And lessons we thought we had learned come back around with each month's cycle and remind us of deeper layers and blind spots. And when we do find a growing sense of place, a place of harmony, there is a sense of release. A new kind of freedom starts to emerge, soothing our modern-day pain and suffering. This book is designed to open our moon dreams, for a deeper affectionate connection with ourselves and others.

Michael Bennett (Ngāti Pikiao, Ngāti Whakaue) and Christine Leunens have written novels that have not only been snapped up by numerous international publisher but are also currently making their way from the page to the screen. Doug Brooks facilitates this ‘behind the scenes’ discussion about the adaptation of Better the Blood and In Amber's Wake.

Michael Bennett is an award-winning screenwriter, director and author. His short films and feature films have won awards internationally. Better the Blood tells the story of tenacious Māori police detective Hana Westerman who is pulled into the search for Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland’s first serial killer. Better the Blood is Bennett's first novel. His first book, In Dark Places (2016), won the Ngaio Marsh Award for nonfiction crime writing.

Christine Leunens’ new novel, In Amber’s Wake, is a romantic drama that is as unpredictable as it is heartfelt, by the author of Prix Médicis-nominated book Caging Skies, which was adapted into the Academy Award-winning movie Jojo Rabbit directed by Taika Waititi. The film adaptation of In Amber’s Wake, whose screenplay Leunens penned, is currently being made into a motion picture, by the producer of the Academy Award-winning Thelma & Louise.

Whiti Hereaka and Nic Low have written two remarkable books that tell ancient Māori stories in fresh and compelling ways, with Hereaka flipping perspectives on a well-known tale, and Low using tramping and climbing adventures to bring the past to life.

Winner of the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction at the 2022 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards, Kurangaituku is the story of Hatupatu told from the perspective of the traditional ‘monster’, Kurangaituku, the bird woman. In this new version of the story, Kurangaituku takes us on the journey of her extraordinary life – from the birds who sang her into being, to the arrival of the Song Makers and the change they brought to her world, and her life with Hatupatu and her death. Through the eyes of Kurangaituku, we come to see how being with Hatupatu changed Kurangaituku, emotionally and in her thoughts and actions, and how devastating his betrayal of her was.

In Uprising: Walking the Southern Alps of New Zealand, Nic Low crosses the Southern Alps more than a dozen times in a bid to understand how his forebears saw the land. Yes, this is a tramping story, but so much more: armed with Ngāi Tahu’s traditional oral maps and the iwi's modern satellite atlas, Low invites us to travel one of the world’s most spectacular landscapes in the company of Māori explorers, raiding parties, and gods and, while doing so, come a little closer to understanding the true history of Aotearoa. When the British arrived, the Southern Alps were not an untouched ‘wilderness’ but rather home to a network of trails crisscrossing the mountains, dotted with settlements, stories and mahinga kai (places where food was tended and harvested).

Hereaka and Low will together explore how storytelling has been used in Māori history in the past and how – and why – is it being reinvented.

Kōrero facilitated by Elizabeth Heritage.

Prize-winning writer and broadcaster Noelle McCarthy's memoir, Grand: Becoming my mother’s daughter, is an astonishing debut about mothers and daughters, drinking, birth and loss, running away and homecoming. Fellow journalist/broadcaster Wendyl Nissen, who had her own mother difficulties and challenges with alcohol, facilitates the conversation.

At the heart of Noelle McCarthy’s memoir is a revelation about lines of women in families, and trauma, and how it has the potential to repeat. From Catholic Ireland in the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s to sparkling Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland in the first years of the new millennium, Grand is a story of the invisible ties that bind us, of bitter legacies handed down through the generations, and of the leap of faith it takes to change them.

ReadingRoom editor Steve Braunias dubbed it the ‘best memoir of the year’ prior to its April release. When he first read it, Braunias said he was ‘variously dazzled, entertained, deeply moved and constantly involved: it's such a readable book, the prose is exact and sometimes beautiful, and the life it reveals is of a woman pretty much doomed to follow in her Mammy's footsteps.

Perhaps moving to the other side of the world was McCarthy's saving grace. After a chaotic start, during which time she worked at a Tāmaki Makaurau student radio station and then RNZ, McCarthy sobered up, started 'doing the work' and today remains both in recovery and a functional and fulfilling relationship with John Daniell, her partner in both love and in business.

Elizabeth Knox CNZM speaks with Catherine Chidgey about her two latest books: The Axeman’s Carnival (Te Herenga Waka University Press, 2022) and her critically acclaimed 2020 novel Remote Sympathy. In both books, Chidgey chips away the façade of domesticity to expose darker places.

The Axeman’s Carnival is Chidgey at her finest – comic, profound, poetic, and true. In this story, Marnie is married to a farmer and their marriage is a violent one. When she rescues a magpie chick that has fallen from its nest and raises it, it becomes an internet sensation. Her husband Rob is opposed to the bird – a ‘pest’ – taking up residence with them, but as its fame spreads and it starts to earn them enough money to save their high-country farm, he grudgingly puts up with it. However, their marriage is placed under greater and greater stress due to the intense attention from their Twitter followers... Things come to a head on the day Rob defends his title at the Axeman’s Carnival (an annual rural event involving competitive woodchopping by strong silent men). Part trickster, part surrogate child, part witness, Tama the magpie is the star of this story.

In Remote Sympathy, which was shortlisted for the 2022 DUBLIN Literary Award, longlisted for the 2022 Women’s Prize for Fiction and was a finalist in the 2021 Ockham NZ Book Award for Fiction, Frau Greta Hahn discovers moving away from their lovely apartment in Munich isn’t nearly as wrenching an experience for her as she had feared. Their new home is even lovelier than the one they left behind, and best of all – right on their doorstep – are some of the finest craftsmen from all over Europe. Frau Hahn and the other officers’ wives living in this small community are encouraged to order anything they desire, whether new curtains made from the finest French fabrics, or furniture designed to the most exacting specifications. Life here in Buchenwald would appear to be idyllic. Yet lying just beyond the forest that surrounds them – so close and yet so remote – is the looming presence of a work camp. A tour de force about the evils of obliviousness, Remote Sympathy compels us to question our continuing and wilful ability to look the other way in a world that is once more in thrall to the idea that everything – even facts, truth, and morals – is relative.

In both stories, the savage and the domestic exist side by side – and overlap. Another central concern for Chidgey in both novels is the formidable power of language; the way we use it to manipulate and conceal as much as we use it to communicate and illuminate.

Bestselling authors Wendyl Nissen and Charity Norman have both ‘been through the fire’ of supporting a parent with dementia, which led to them writing two astonishing books. In this session, they explore what works when it comes to dementia treatment and care and what desperately needs to change to ensure our loved ones can die with dignity.

Wendy Nissen’s mother Elsie died with Alzheimer’s in 2019 and Charity Norman’s mother Beryl died with the same disease in 2016. When a parent gets dementia, how do their immediate whānau attempt to understand and process the experience afterwards?

In Charity Norman’s case, she wrote Remember Me, a compelling novel about a 40-something woman called Emily returning to Aotearoa to care for her father who has dementia. The story is also a ‘whodunnit’, as Emily gradually finds out the truth about the disappearance of their neighbour’s daughter 25 years earlier. When The Spinoff books editor Catherine Woulfe described the novel as 'extraordinarily moving in its exploration of the notion of a good death', she concluded that one can't write a book like this without a real story behind it. This is your opportunity to hear it.

Wendyl Nissen also attempted to come to terms with her mother’s final years by writing about it; in her case, a funny and moving memoir called My Mother and Other Secrets.

In doing so, she unexpectedly exposed numerous family secrets. Determined to uncover the buried truth, Nissen’s journalistic training led her to some wild and intriguing stories of loss, grief, and love. My Mother and Other Secrets is a story about mothers and daughters, ageing and the way deep family traumas echo across generations, spliced with practical advice.

In this session, which is facilitated by Kerry Sunderland, we consider how best to support a loved with dementia, discuss how to look after yourself in the process, examine theories about the contributing factors – genetics, nutrition, insomnia, physical inactivity, emotional repression – and look at what the latest science says about prevention.

Anke Richter’s Cult Trip is a gripping, visceral, thriller-like investigation into Centrepoint, Gloriavale and Agama Yoga. In this session, Noelle McCarthy quizzes Richter about the dynamics that turn a group into a cult, and why we are all susceptible to undue influence. 

Cult Trip: Inside the world of coercion & control is an investigative personal deep dive into Aotearoa New Zealand’s most notorious present and former “high-control groups”, told in a personal journalism style by Anke Richter, one of the world's leading journalists on cults.

This book can be compared to Stasiland in style. Apart from sharing survivors' stories, the book also touches more lightly on international groups, such as Orgasmic Meditation in California, where Richter spent time in an OM-house and the former ashram of Osho in Pune, India, which she visited.

The chapters are introduced and woven together by Richter's personal experience as a former follower and now critic of one particular "school" that was transformational for her. She will describe her challenges of working in the field of cult reporting, of coming under attack by perpetrators and sometimes getting too close to victims and their trauma – and the lessons she learned.

In 'The Crucial Decade', Kim Hill invites Paul Tapsell (Te Arawa, Tainui), Mike Joy and Dave Lowe to explain how we can respond to the climate crisis and transform our lands, waterways and communities. Recorded on Sunday October 22 at the 2022 Nelson Arts Festival, as part of our Pukapuka Talks literary programme.

In Kāinga: People, Land, Belonging (BWB Texts) Paul Tapsell looks at the legacy of colonisation and how alienation from traditional Māori settlements and whenua (land) has become part of a wider story of environmental degradation and system collapse. He argues that only a complete step-change, one that embraces kāinga, can transform our lands and waterways, and potentially become a source of inspiration to the world.

In both Inherited Pollution and Mountains to the Sea (both published by BWB Texts) leading freshwater ecologist in Aotearoa Mike Joy calls for governments to listen to climate scientists and explores how we all need to play our part in supporting a shift away from growth at any cost.

Pre-2020, an alarmist was someone who exaggerated a danger, thus needlessly causing worry or panic, while today it describes someone who justifiably raises the alarm about a global danger to the Earth’s biosphere. In The Alarmist: Fifty Years Measuring Climate Change (THWUP), which won the E.H. McCormick Prize for a best first work of General Non-Fiction, Dave Lowe explains what he’s learned from 50 years of climate research and why he’s hopeful young people can make a difference.