Bestsellers back for book month
Hamilton Book Month will aim to answer your burning questions: how do you combat writer’s block, does coffee help with your prose and how long does it take to write a bestseller?
The wide range of events planned should cater for most interests, organisers say.
For keen cooks, there will be opportunities for a chat with Emma Galloway, Alexa Johnston, Bev Wood and Denise Irvine.
Closet sleuths can get captivated by Paul Cleave’s thrillers, and music lovers can unite at the panel orchestrated by musician Matthew Bannister.
There really is a genre for everyone in the 15 events planned for numerous locations in the Waikato.
Hamilton Book Month committee member Catherine Wallace said the attendance last year averaged 40 at each event.
The most popular, with around 70 guests was Cooking the Books, Wallace said, where cookbook writers and food reviewers flocked to discuss thier ideas.
She suspects this year’s event will be just as well-received.
Fans of poetry are also catered for. Poet, children’s author and doctor Glenn Colquhoun will hold a private afternoon event and a public evening workshop.
One quarter of the fiction panel is Julie Thomas, the author behind the familiar covers of The Keeper of Secrets and Rachel’s Legacy. Award-winning author Paul Cleave often divides his time between his home city of Christchurch, where all of his novels are set, and Europe, where none of his novels are set.
His works have been bestsellers that have been translated into more than a dozen languages and have sold over a million copies.
Cleave will host Crime Night on Collingwood Street, August 15.
And on August 13, to celebrate Roald Dahl’s 99 year and 11 month birthday, local actors will bring classic Dahl stories to life.
Winter is a good time to indulge in a new book or discover a new author, Wallace said. And with plenty on offer this month, August seems sure to be a book lover’s delight.