In May, I attended the Auckland Writers Festival for the first time, and I was mesmerised from beginning to end. From the content of the sessions and insights into authors’ research, the challenges in the industry, the writing process, and how life got them to this point, to the wonderful people I was fortunate enough to meet in person, it was a whirlwind of a week and something that will leave me forever changed.

For those unfamiliar with the Auckland Writers Festival, it is New Zealand’s biggest literary festival, and one of the biggest in Australasia. It brings together domestic and international authors, from literary fiction and romance authors to economists, poets, and children’s book authors. Over the course of a few weeks, Auckland is blessed with an incredibly rich literary culture and experiences that welcome all kinds of readers, and over 200 events and authors grace us with their time and stories. I can’t believe I hadn’t been to the festival before 2026, because this was like paradise for me. So, hopefully, I can convince local readers to spoil themselves next year and come along, and for international readers to take a second look at the local literary festivals and events in your area.

The first thing I want to note is that 2026 marked a year of firsts not just for me, but for the festival itself. A new event was added to the mix this year called Plot Twist, aimed at the young adult audience you would tend to find on bookish social media, featuring talks geared towards dark academia, romantasy, “weird girl lit”, and other genres popular with younger readers. We were also extremely fortunate to have authors like R.F. Kuang, Meiko Kawakami, Bora Chung, Shanna Tan, Josh Silver, Michael Pederson, Nikita Gill, and many others. This event brought a whole different vibe to the Auckland Writers Festival, making it feel more inclusive of younger readers, different genres outside of the traditional bestsellers, and showed that younger readers are here and excited for the future of books and reading. I am sure that this will become a fixed portion of the festival, and I am so looking forward to attending sessions next year.

One of the wonderful things about the Auckland Writers Festival, especially for smaller authors, is being able to have your name and face be seen and heard by a whole lot of people. It’s nerve-racking, of course, but it is what will help propel writing careers. Several smaller New Zealand authors were able to speak and showcase their work alongside international bestsellers and globally-known names, and it was so wonderful as an audience member to see Kiwis sitting on the same level as big names. I feel that often we can forget how incredible our authors are, and this kind of reminder is what helps set the knowledge into stone. It is also an amazing showcase of how diverse our authors are, not just in who they are but what they write, and I cannot wait to see who features in 2027’s lineup.

I need to make a point clear here, because I don’t want to leave this group out. Many booksellers and independent bookstore owners were also at the Auckland Writers Festival, some as panel chairs and others as speakers during sessions. These are such a key group of people that we need to appreciate and learn more from, and I wish there was a session talking about the realities of independent booksellers in New Zealand. We are a small country made up of a lot of small and medium-sized businesses, and it is extremely difficult to keep a bookshop in profit when you are having to compete with overseas companies. Without these independent bookstores, we lose a huge part of our bookish communities, not just tangibly in the way of lost community spaces, but metaphorically, too. Independent bookstores and the people working inside them are instrumental to the community, from facilitating conversation and discussions about books and recent reads to serving as intermediaries between readers and authors. Without them, the literary ecosystem would collapse. This is no exaggeration. As a country, we cannot allow our community to suffer at the hands of big corporations selling books for cheaper, because with every book bought overseas, that is one more paddle needed to keep afloat in a tough industry. Older generations and casual readers may not often buy outside of New Zealand, so maybe it is the younger readers who need to hear this, but I feel it is a lesson we all need to be made aware of, and I would love to see such a session held at the Auckland Writers Festival 2027.

If you attended the Auckland Writers Festival or any recent festival in your area, let me know what you thought about it. What was the highlight for you? Have you found new authors you otherwise wouldn’t have thought to read? Is there a new genre you are getting into thanks to a talk you saw?