Queenstown Writers Festival on track for 'most successful yet'

The Queenstown Writers Festival has sold a record number of tickets for this year’s event.

With two weeks until the festival’s Gala Opening on October 31, Festival Trust Chairperson, Tanya Surrey, says, 750 tickets had already sold - the most presales they'd had.

“We’re on track to having the most successful festival yet.”

Tickets are still available for all 33 events however, according to Surrey, some are close to being sold out.

Surrey attributes the popularity of this year’s festival to the wide range of writers in the programme as well as the variety of events designed to appeal to the community.

“Live Action Storytelling” for children, one example in the diverse programme, is proving popular. Children bring parents with them to participate in an innovative approach to storytelling. Writer Sonya Wilson, and cartoonist Toby Morris, will work in tandem to create a story prompted by the young audience.

From crime to heartbreak, neurodiversity to romantasy, television to Polkinghorne, the festival’s programme is designed for broad appeal.

For aspiring authors there is a 48-hour writing competition judged by award winning author, Owen Marshal.

Author, Jenny Pattrick, best known for her historical fiction novels, The Denniston Rose and Heart of Coal, brings a contemporary novel to this year’s festival.

Sea Change is set in a small, fictious, community which bears more than a passing resemblance to Paekākāriki, near Wellington.

While the setting is in the North Island, Pattrick alights on themes in Sea Change a Queenstown audience will relate to. Pattrick weaves together an earthquake on Southern Alpine faultline with the presence of a wealthy developer imposing their intentions upon the landscape.

“It’s about preparedness for an earthquake, because we think it’s never going to happen. Are we ready for it? I doubt it,” Pattrick says.

Without revealing any more of her story, Pattrick says, “we need to really value the practical people in our community, the tradies, and the innovative people, because they’ll be the ones who’ll come up with solutions when disaster strikes”.

Surrey says Queenstown is rated as New Zealand’s second-most creative centre, after Wellington.

“We’re delighted to be part of the creative economy."

She says Infometrics data show the creative economy adds around $34 million per year to the Queenstown Lakes economy.

The festival runs from October 30 until November 3.

Main image: Author Jenny Pattrick Photo / Deanna Walker