Authors
We are still finalising our authors for the next Festival 6-8 July 2018 - watch this space...
Our 2017 Authors
From historian Anne Salmond in the Marlborough Sounds, to novelist Catherine Chidgey at Cloudy Bay, we were privileged to have amazing 11 authors for 2017 - check out selected podcasts...
Alice Galletly
Alice Galletly drank and blogged about a different beer every single day for a year to research her wonderfully witty and informative How to have a beer. Read more...
Anne Salmond
Dame Anne Salmond makes history intriguing, exciting and highly relevant. An eminent anthropologist, historian, writer and environmentalist, Dame Anne shares her understanding of the Maori experience and how it shapes us all as New Zealanders. Read more...
Brian Turner
Brian Turner is a former New Zealand Poet Laureate and one of this country's best loved poets. An ardent and accomplished sportsman, conservationist and champion of our wild places, he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by the University of Otago in 2011. Read more...
CK Stead
CK Stead barely requires introduction; he is an award-winning novelist, as well as a poet, literary critic, essayist and emeritus professor of English of the University of Auckland. Read more...
Catherine Chidgey
Catherine received critical acclaim for her first three novels. Her very first In a Fishbone Church won the Best First Book at the New Zealand Book Awards. She has received numerous awards and fellowships. Read more...
Emma Neale
Emma Neale is an award-winning poet and prose writer, whose first novel Night Swimming was published in 1998, followed by her first collection of poetry Sleeve Notes in 1999. Read more...
Gavin Bishop
Gavin Bishop is an award-winning children’s picture book writer and illustrator. His nearly 70 published books range from original stories to retellings of Maori myths, European fairytales, and nursery rhymes. Read more...
John Pickrell
John Pickrell is an award-winning journalist, the former editor of Australian Geographic magazine and the author of Flying Dinosaurs, How Fearsome Reptiles Became Birds and more. Read more...
Joy Cowley
Joy Cowley is one of New Zealand’s best-loved writers for children and a Marlborough Living Treasure. Joy was made a Distinguished Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to children’s literature in 2005. Read more...
Sarah Laing
Sarah Laing is a fiction writer, cartoonist, illustrator and graphic designer whose work is re-introducing adults to the graphic novel genre - comics - they loved as children. Read more...
Tracey Slaughter
Tracey's short fiction has received numerous awards, including the international Bridport Prize 2014, a 2007 NZ Book Month Award, and BNZ Katherine Mansfield Awards in 2004 and 2001. Read more...
Our Journalists
We were lucky to feature four award-winning journalists at this year's festival...
Charles Anderson
Charles Anderson’s work has appeared in the International New York Times, the Guardian, the Sydney Morning Herald and National Geographic Traveller. Read more...
Mike White
Mike White has been a journalist for 20 years and has reported from many countries, including Afghanistan and Iraq. Read more...
Naomi Arnold
Naomi Arnold is an award-winning freelance journalist who writes regularly for New Zealand Geographic, Wilderness, Fairfax, and The Spinoff. Read more...
Nikki Macdonald
Nikki Macdonald is a senior feature writer at The Dominion Post. For the love of journalism, she has eaten hospital food for a week & reported from the inside of a nuclear reactor. Read more...
Our Interviewers
This year we had six interviewers set to talk with our group of authors - a number of regulars were joined by several new hands...
Ben Glover
A local winemaker, Ben Glover will talk with Alice Galletly about beer.
Jane Forrest Waghorn
Jane Forrest Waghorn, once a librarian and still a passionate reader, is a regular interviewer at the festival. This year she talks with a range of authors.
Mike White
Mike White has won more than 20 Qantas and Canon media awards, and has been New Zealand Feature Writer of the Year three times. A regular at our festivals, he will interview a range of authors in 2017. Read more...
Nikki Macdonald
Nikki Macdonald is a multi award-winning senior feature writer at The Dominion Post. She is both interviewer and speaker at this year's festival. Read more...
Peter Jerram
A vet by trade and more recently author, Peter Jerram spoke at last year's festival and will interview Anne Salmond this year.
Tessa Nicholson
With a background in journalism and editing, Tessa Nicholson is an avid reader in her leisure time and a regular interviewer at our festivals. This year she gets in depth with a number of authors.
Past Authors
Since it began in 2014, the Marlborough Book Festival has hosted some amazing New Zealand authors...
2016
Peter Anderson | Bruce Ansley | Steve Braunias | Kate De Goldi | Charlotte Grimshaw | Witi Ihimaera | Peter Jerram | Rachael King | Bill Manhire | Greg McGee | Jane Ussher
2015
Joe Bennett | Joy Cowley | Judith Curran | Fiona Farrell | Patricia Grace | Nicky Hager | Janet Hunt | Liam McIlvanney | Nicky Pellegrino | Mike White
2014
Harry Broad | Ron Crosby | Barbara DeLeo | Karen Healey | Dame Fiona Kidman | Elizabeth Knox