Our authors at Auckland Writers Festival 2026
International authors
Mick Herron
Mick Herron is the #1 Sunday Times bestselling author of the Slough House thrillers, which have been published in over twenty-five languages and are the basis of the award-winning TV series Slow Horses, starring Gary Oldman as Jackson Lamb. Among his other novels are the Zoë Boehm series, also now adapted for TV starring Emma Thompson and Ruth Wilson, and the standalone novels The Secret Hours and Nobody Walks. Mick's awards include the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year and the CWA Gold, Steel and Diamond Daggers. A fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, he was born in Newcastle upon Tyne, and now lives in Oxford.
Events
Mick Herron
Fri, 15 May 2026
8:30pm – 9:45pm
Kiri Te Kanawa Theatre, Aotea Centre
Fail Again. Fail Better?
Sat, 16 May 2026
11:30am – 12:30pm
Hunua Room, Aotea Centre
Florence Knapp
Florence Knapp has previously written a non-fiction book about a centuries-old method of quilt making, as well as contributing to a book for the V&A Museum. She lives just outside London with her husband and their dog. Their two children have now flown the nest. The Names is Florence's debut novel and will be published in more than thirty languages.
Events
Florence Knapp: The Names
Fri, 15 May 2026
7:00pm – 8:00pm
Hunua Room, Aotea Centre
Sliding Doors
Sun, 17 May 2026
4:00pm – 5:00pm
Hunua Room, Aotea Centre
Maggie O'Farrell
Maggie O'Farrell is the author of Hamnet, Winner of the Women's Prize for Fiction 2020, and the memoir I am, I am, I am, both Sunday Times no. 1 bestsellers. Her novels include After You'd Gone, My Lover's Lover, The Distance Between Us, which won a Somerset Maugham Award, The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox, The Hand That First Held Mine, which won the 2010 Costa Novel Award, Instructions for a Heatwave, This Must Be the Place and The Marriage Portrait, which was shortlisted for the Women's Prize. She is also the author of three books for children, Where Snow Angels Go, The Boy Who Lost His Spark and When the Stammer Came to Stay. She lives in Edinburgh.
Events
Maggie O'Farrell
Virtual Event
Tue, 12 May 2026
6:30pm – 7:30pm
Kiri Te Kanawa Theatre, Aotea Centre
Louise Erdrich
Louise Erdrich, a member of the Turtle Mountain Band and of Chippewa, is the author of many novels as well as volumes of poetry, children's books, and a memoir of early motherhood. Her novel The Round House won the National Book Award for Fiction. Love Medicine and LaRose received the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction. Erdrich lives in Minnesota with her daughters and is the owner of Birchbark Books, a small independent bookstore. Her book, The Night Watchman, won the Pulitzer Prize. A ghost lives in her creaky old house.
Events
Writing In Today's America
Sat, 16 May 2026
1:00pm – 2:00pm
Kiri Te Kanawa Theatre, Aotea Centre
Indigenous Languages, Translation and Meaning
Sun, 17 May 2026
10:00am – 11:00am
Waitākere Room, Aotea Centre
Louise Erdrich
Sun, 17 May 2026
2:30pm – 3:30pm
Kiri Te Kanawa Theatre, Aotea Centre
S.A. Cosby
S. A. Cosby is a best selling writer from Southeastern Virginia. He resides in Gloucester, VA. He is a New York Times bestseller and his work has been featured in numerous magazines and anthologies. He has also won the Anthony Award, ITW Thriller Award, Barry Award, Macavity Award, BCALA Award, and Audie Award and has been longlisted for the ALA Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence.
Events
Down the Rabbithole
Fri, 15 May 2026
9:00pm – 10:00pm
Herald Theatre, Aotea Centre
Writing in Today’s America
Sat, 16 May 2026
1:00pm – 2:00pm
Kiri Te Kanawa Theatre, Aotea Centre
S.A. Cosby
Sat, 16 May 2026
4:00pm – 5:00pm
Hunua Room, Aotea Centre
Amitav Ghosh
Amitav Ghosh is the author of the bestselling Ibis trilogy, comprised of Sea of Poppies (short-listed for the 2008 Man Booker Prize), River of Smoke, and Flood of Fire. His other novels include The Circle of Reason, which won the Prix Médicis étranger, and The Glass Palace. He is the author of many works of nonfiction, including The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable and The Nutmeg's Curse: Parables for a Planet in Crisis. He holds two lifetime achievement awards and four honorary doctorates. In 2015, he was named as a finalist of the Man Booker International Prize. In 2018, Ghosh became the first English-language writer to receive the Jnanpith Award, India's highest literary honor, and in 2024 he was awarded the Laureate Erasmus Prize. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Events
A Shaken World Order?
Fri, 15 May 2026
4:00pm – 5:00pm
Kiri Te Kanawa Theatre, Aotea Centre
Amitav Ghosh
Sat, 16 May 2026
4:00pm – 5:00pm
Kiri Te Kanawa Theatre, Aotea Centre
Writing the Climate Reckoning
Sun, 17 May 2026
11:30am – 12:30pm
Hunua Room, Aotea Centre
Maria Reva
Maria Reva was born in Ukraine and grew up in Canada. Her story collection, Good Citizens Need Not Fear, won the Kobzar Book Award and was a finalist for the Writers' Trust of Canada's Fiction Prize. Her writing has been featured in The Atlantic, Granta, The Best American Short Stories, and elsewhere. She also works as an opera librettist.
Events
Meet the Canadian Writers
Fri, 15 May 2026
11:30am – 12:30pm
Hunua Room, Aotea Centre
Maria Reva: Creating Character Networks
Sat, 16 May 2026
9:00am – 10:30am
Waihorotiu Room, Level 4, Aotea Centre
Maria Reva
Sat, 16 May 2026
1:00pm – 2:00pm
Waitākere Room, Aotea Centre
Art in the Time of War
Sat, 16 May 2026
5:30pm – 6:30pm
Waitākere Room, Aotea Centre
Spice Salon
Sat, 16 May 2026
9:00pm – 10:00pm
Herald Theatre, Aotea Centre
Tareq Baconi
Tareq Baconi is a Palestinian writer, scholar, and activist. He is the grandson of refugees from Jerusalem and Haifa and grew up between Amman and Beirut. His work has appeared in, among others, The New York Times and The Baffler, and he contributes essays to The New York Review of Books and the London Review of Books. He has also written for film; his award-winning BFI short One Like Him, a queer love story set in Jordan, screened in over thirty festivals. He is the author of Hamas Contained: A History of Palestinian Resistance, which was shortlisted for the Palestine Book Award, and Fire in Every Direction.
Events
Art in the Time of War
Sat, 16 May 2026
5:30pm – 6:30pm
Waitākere Room, Aotea Centre
Tareq Baconi
Sun, 17 May 2026
11:30am – 12:30pm
Waitākere Room, Aotea Centre
Local Authors
Charlotte Glennie
Charlotte Glennie is an accomplished journalist with more than two decades of broadcast and media experience, half of that spent working in Asia. She has worked with media organisations including the BBC, ABC and TVNZ, and her career highlights include New Zealand's Supreme Award for Excellence in Television Journalism - recognising coverage of news in Asia, including the Indian Ocean tsunami; the New Zealand Government Special Service Medal for reporting in the aftermath of the Asian tsunami; and the Clarion Award for Radio Documentary of the Year - an ABC investigation into the impact of the war in Afghanistan on Australian soldiers and their families. Charlotte lives in Sydney with her partner and two children. This is her first book.
Events
Frontlines and Headlines: The Life of a Foreign Correspondent
Sun, 17 May 2026
1:00pm – 2:00pm
Kiri Te Kanawa Theatre, Aotea Centre
Zoë Rankin
Zoë Rankin grew up in Scotland. She studied International Relations with Arabic before going on to qualify as a teacher. She spent many years travelling in Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and Africa, and eventually settled in New Zealand. Her father was in mountain rescue in Scotland, and so her passion for the outdoors grew early. She spends a lot of time hiking and cycling with her two young children in New Zealand, and the more remote locations inspired the idea for The Vanishing Place.
Events
Small Towns, Dark Truths
Fri, 15 May 2026
5:30pm – 6:30pm
Limelight Room, Aotea Centre
Olivia Spooner
Olivia Spooner is the number one bestselling author of three historical novels, The American Boys, The Songbirds of Florence and The Girl from London. She is also the author of two contemporary novels, A Way Back to Happy and A Bumpy Year. A former bookshop owner, Olivia is a strong advocate for the importance of books and reading. She lives in Auckland, New Zealand, with her family.
Events
The Happenstance Historians
Fri, 15 May 2026
2:30pm – 3:30pm
Waitākere Room, Aotea Centre
Ivy Cliffwater
Ivy Cliffwater is a debut writer, working fulltime on her writing and building her platform. She lives in Auckland, on the North Shore. Combining her love for romance and fantasy, Ivy writes captivating stories that transport readers to hidden lands brimming with magic and passion. When she’s not weaving tales, Ivy can often be found at the local beach, taking in the coastal beauty with her husband and their well-loved border collie, Poppy.
Events
The Rise of Romance
Sun, 17 May 2026
12:40pm – 1:40pm
Rangatira, Q Theatre
Shana Chandra
Shana Chandra is a Tāmaki Makaurau born writer, researcher and educator of Indo-Fijian heritage and Girmitiya descent, currently based in Limoges, France. Her writing voices the history of her displaced and forgotten indentured-labourer ancestors in their words, repairing and restoring it from beneath the empire's shadow and exploring how the violence and complexities of their indenture rooted into her life growing up in Aotearoa. After living in Japan and Naarm (Melbourne), in 2016 she completed her Masters of Creative Writing at the University of Technology in Sydney. Her writing has appeared in Lindsay, Love in the Time of Covid Chronicle, UTS Anthology: The Light Borrowers and Landfall magazine. For the past decade Shana has also worked as a freelance writer and has been featured in international fashion, arts and culture publications.
Events
A Heavy History: Girmitiyas in Fiji
Sun, 17 May 2026
11:30am – 12:30pm
Limelight Room, Aotea Centre
Debut of the Day: Shana Chandra
Sun, 17 May 2026
2:00pm – 2:30pm
Kōrero Corner Level 5
Little Moa
Kim Kearney
Kimberley Ngareta Kearney (Ngāti Maniapoto, Tūhoe) spent many years as a primary school teacher where she developed a love for sharing stories with young minds. Embarking on a journey to re-indigenise her whānau and reclaim the language that was lost generations before, Kim was inspired to write The Lost Words as a tribute to her and many others' rediscovered treasure, te reo Māori.
Alba Gil Celdrán
Alba is an award-winning illustrator and art teacher originally from Barcelona, Spain. Now she's based in Auckland Aotearoa New Zealand, where she teaches drawing and painting to both kids and adults. She's passionate about children's books, especially those filled with magic and adventure, and her favourite aspect of illustration is character design, where she brings the protagonists of these stories to life.
