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100 PRESENTERS AND 50 EVENTS AT THE FEATHERSTON BOOKTOWN KARUKATEA 2022 FESTIVAL

May 9, 2022 May 2022 No Comments

With a line-up of more than one hundred presenters and fifty events, Featherston, New Zealand’s only Booktown, is getting ready to welcome over 7,000 visitors to the Wairarapa for another outstanding literary weekend over 8-12 June.

The seventh Featherston Booktown Karukatea 2022 Festival kicks off on Friday 10 June with the now famous Fish’n’Chip supper – with guest speaker the acclaimed writer, Witi Ihimaera. The rest of the weekend will be filled with stellar writers and literary entertainment, starting with Late Nite Lit’s singing sensation Moana Leota and her band putting poetry to music. 

Brains will buzz all weekend with talks by literary heavyweights, including Dame Fiona Kidman, Patricia Grace, Owen Marshall, Victor Rodger, Roger Hall, Joy Cowley and Selina Tusitala Marsh. There will be red-hot poetry readings, a celebration of Asian-Kiwi writers, political autobiographies, horror stories in a historic hotel, award-winning children’s book illustrators, and discussions on honest and bold memoirs like Megan Dunn’s What I Learned At Art School, and Noelle McCarthy’s Grand. 

There will also be a strong focus on the Lord of the Rings trilogy twenty years on from the first New Zealand screenings of the Peter Jackson directed films, including a Lord of the Rings quiz.

The Festival programme was launched on Tuesday 26 April at 7:30 PM at the Property Brokers Featherston Sports Hub. Tickets are available at eventfinda.co.nz and the programme is at booktown.org.nz.

“Featherston Booktown is Aotearoa New Zealand’s most intense and welcoming celebration of the artefact of the book – writing them, designing them, publishing them, illustrating them, printing them, and selling them. The whole town of Featherston becomes the venue for the Festival and the entire community welcomes our presenters and writers and makes them feel at home,” says Peter Biggs, the Featherston Booktown Trust Chair.

All children’s events during the Festival are free, thanks to generous funding from the South Wairarapa District Council, and REAP Wairarapa. 

“This year, we will be giving a record-breaking 2,500 book vouchers to local South Wairarapa primary school-aged children,” says Peter Biggs. “The voucher project encourages children’s literacy, the exquisite independence of buying their own book, and supports our local booksellers.”

A bus ride for Martinborough, Pirinoa, and Kahutara school children

Tranzit will provide a coach on Sunday 12 June to pick up Martinborough, Kahutara and Pirinoa school children and their caregivers. The coach will pick them up at their schools and bring them into Featherston especially to hear author and bus driver Christopher Candy read from his book Comet the Red Bus. After hearing about Comet the Red Bus, children and their caregivers can enjoy a couple of hours of book-related events and book shopping in Featherston before heading home again on the coach. The coach rides will be arranged through the schools.

“The Featherston Booktown Karukatea Festival continues to go from strength to strength, illustrated by the continued support of our funders and supporters such as Creative NZ, The Lion Foundation, Trust House Foundation, the South Wairarapa District Council, the Macarthy Trust and Eastern and Central Community Trust. We’re all so looking forward to staging live events,” says Mr Biggs.

The Featherston Booktown Karukatea 2022 Festival runs from 8-12 June. 

Tickets are available at eventfinda.co.nz.  The programme is at www.booktown.org.nz.

If you’d like to volunteer, we’d love to hear from you! Email info@booktown.org.nz.

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