Akaroa festival outshines the rest of NZ

2026-03-08 - 16:07

Akaroa! French, English, Ngāi Tahu, small but lyrically formed on the shores of a tidal harbour filling and emptying a crater ringed by low-lying volcanoes, some 700 people living the good life on the watery Banks Peninsula two hours east of Christchurch, with 100 visitors rolling into town in the weekend for the Akaroa readers and writers festival—it’s the prettiest setting for any literary festival in New Zealand, even prettier in the sunshine that warmed the rues and boulevards all day Saturday and Sunday. I loved not quite every second—there were thin, mean pickings at the morning teas—but felt, like everyone swanning around the dear old Victorian pile Gaiety Hall, lucky to be there. The programme was lively, busy, sometimes eccentric. There were book clubs. Questions were asked about revolving compost. One event ended early when a woman in the audience had a nasty turn. The festival scored a coup in securing 2023 Booker winner Shehan Karunatilaka, who turned up in Akaroa with his beautiful statuesque wife Eranga Tennekoon and their two children. Their Sri Lankan family of four doubled the number of people of colour at the festival. Like all literary events, it resembled a U3A gathering of the white and retired, but there was vigour and youth in the cohort of college students from Christchurch who attend the Write On school writing programme and were sponsored to come to Akaroa. I chatted with Cooper, 18, who has attended the programme’s Saturday classes since he was 8: a decade in literature, already. Nice guy, awesome Afro. Damien Wilkins was there, quietly and meaningfully. “Fiction to me is walking around the back of the building and looking in through the windows where women are talking.” Joe Bennett was there, LOUDLY and I guess entertainingly for those who like volume. On the page he is a fine prose stylist but on the stage he is an irrepressible old ham and within two minutes of of his bellowing I longed to escape. A woman got up to leave after five minutes so I seized the opportunity to follow her out the door. We chatted about books and she said she had got so immersed in Dunedin writer Laurence Fearnley’s novel Scented that she got a job at a fragrance department. The timing was fortunate. A fortnight earlier floods had cut off the road to Akaroa and the Spark tower crashed down in heavy rains. But it was picture perfect in the weekend. There were stingrays and bellbirds. I ran into Auckland journo couple Eugene Bingham and Suzanne McFadden—they had no idea there was a literary festival on, they were in Akaroa to celebrate their 25th wedding anniversary. I saw them clinking champagne glasses at Ma Maison on the waterfront as the sun set on Saturday night. I also ran into a former Auckland sex worker whose clients included Philip Polkinghorne. I kept running into writers. There was crime novelist Vanda Symond, filiming a promotional video on her phone for her publisher in London. She shared a session with another crime novelist, Liam McIlvanney, who said, “Some people think I have descended into the basement of literature by writing crime fiction.” In fact it’s a fully imagined and psychologically disturbing basement, and in his most recent novel The Good Father he kills off people in a small Scottish seaside town, “like Akaroa”, he said threateningly. The fire service siren hooted over Akaroa on Sunday morning, followed by police and ambulance sirens. Daniel Smith and Owen Marshall at The Gaiety Theatre, Akaroa, on Sunday afternoon. Photo: Steve Brauias I chaired another prolific killer of characters, Owen Marshall, in a session at the Gaiety alongside Daniel Smith from the Akaroa Museum. Both have produced excellent books which touch on the profound South. Smith has published the hardback A Rural Life in Black & White, a gallery of photos documenting Banks Peninsula life in the 1950s. They were taken by Le Bons Bay farmer Don McKay. My favourite image was of his mum Gladys (his dad’s name was Leicester) ironing a pair of striped pyjamas. Chores and customs: there were neat symmetries between the photos and Owen Marshall’s upcoming book of poems, Beyond the Border. My favourite of his reflections and memories of Canterbury life had these great closing lines of a family outing to visit relatives: As we drove away, Mum turned from the front seat, in a quiet voice explained that it’s discourteous to ever take the last cake on a plate. I ate poorly in Akaroa. There was a flat Coke out of the taps at waterside bar Tini with two rubbery grilled prawns that tasted of the industrial Talleys complex. I gave an after-dinner speech at the Gaiety on Saturday night. The dinner was like a meal out of the 1950s. A photo of it would have fitted in nicely in Don McKay’s book. The pleasure was in the weather (highs of 25), the sight of juicy kelp washed ashore, the friendliness. I met the mother of the Crown solicitor for Christchurch. Another woman cheerfully announced, “I’ve just been told I have ADHD!” Murray and Felicity, mein hosts at the Criterion motel, left the room key in the door. “We have a no-stress policy,” Murray declared. The entire weekend shared that vibe. Damien Wilkins charmingly allowed that as a student at the IIML he was warily regarded as “a baby-faced shark.” The equally charming Shehan Karunatilaka said of his Booker-winning novel The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida, “My ramblings were mistaken for literature and won a prize.” Two authors at Akaroa are shortlisted for this year’s Ockham award for nonfiction, Naomi Arnold, who is about to head for Stewart Island to look at dotterel, and Tina Makereti, who talked about “the spaces around words that you haven’t written”. Akaroa’s festival was dedicated to the space around words that have been written. Great weekend, perfectly formed little festival. Throughout, authors could only hope their books will match the ambitious mission statement on the front-page banner of The Akaroa Mail: “News and features of lasting interest.”