Write on!

Autumn in Auckland... the leaves fall in Victoria Park, the hardy take last-chance dips in the ocean, and the city's literature lovers descend on the Aotea Centre for the Auckland Writers Festival.

Check out the programme and book your tickets for a festival packed with Booker, Pulitzer and TS Eliot Poetry Prize winners. The glittering night of nights is the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards on Wednesday 17 May, when winners will be announced for the best books published in NZ in the last year. Anyone can attend (tickets are just $16); it's a wonderful opportunity to hear the nervous nominees reading from their shortlisted works and maybe discover a lifechanging new favourite.

The other event we're delighted to be involved with is Poetry & Music, taking place at 4pm on Sunday 21 May in the Aotea's Limelight Room. If you attended the debut of this event last year, you'll know just how magical the pairing of our brilliant Ockham Collective musicians (Ben Fernandez, Jessie Leov, Martin Roberts and Joella Pinto) with the finalists in the poetry category of the Ockham NZ Book Awards can be. The poets read and the musicians interpret, making for a mesmerising performance.

Stick around afterwards for the finale of the festival, the Honoured Writer session, this year celebrating Katherine Mansfield on the centenary of her death. The Ockham Collective's Paula Morris is amongst the literary luminaries who will be sharing anecdotes of what Mansfield means to them. Paula is also hosting panel discussion The Korean Influence, On Never Giving Up with Booker-winner Bernadine Evarito (both on Saturday 20 May), and Dust Child with PEN-winner Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai (on Sunday 21 May).

Another one to look out for is Sonnets for Albert on the evening of Saturday 20 May, which will see award-winning Trinidadian poet Anthony Joseph paired in conversation with Ockham Collective alumni and NZ poet laureate Selina Tusitala Marsh.