Crux podcast: Tanya Surrey - The Queenstown Writers Festival

It's been hard to ignore. The 2024 Queenstown Writers Festival is bigger than ever and starts soon - October 31 to November 3.

This week we are in conversation with festival chair Tanya Surrey.

She's a lawyer and our interview reveals an undeniable bias towards the crime genre, but there's also a dazzling cornucopia of other writing - fiction, non-fiction, children's books, history - you name it and it's part of the 2024 Queenstown Writers Festival.

Ms Surrey not only describes some of her personal favourites but takes us on a walk through the rest of the programme (You can browse the programme here - and buy tickets).

Also this week, Kim Bowden discusses the surprising reemergence of a Ngāi Tahu hot pools project - up at the controversial Lakeview site. There's Queenstown Lakes District Council reserve land involved and we wonder if that is a point of some significance.

Plus, we look at a property developer who's trying to contribute money to funding Queenstown infrastructure and is finding the QLDC to be not particularly interested - go figure!

We also check out the Crux 2024 QLDC council satisfaction survey - currently sitting at four percent and still open. How low can they go?

Listen to the podcast - Episode 36 is the shortened highlights interview version with top stories of the week. Episode 37 is the full interview with Ms Surrey.