Writers on Mondays: Ōrongohau – Best New Zealand Poems 2025
A selection of excellent poets read their work chosen for Ōrongohau | Best New Zealand Poems in a warm-up for National Poetry Day.
Mon 24 Aug 2026, 12.15 to 1.15
Event Ngā kaupapa motuhake
Writers on Mondays: Who’s that girl? Kate Camp and Noelle McCarthy
Two brilliant writers discuss their funny and visceral memoirs that aren’t afraid to face up to their teenage selves, vampires, and the 1980s.
When | Āhea
Mon 17 Aug 2026, 12.15 to 1.15
Where | Ki hea
Rongomaraeroa, the marae, Level 4
Cost | Te utu
Free, with museum entry
In this event memoirists Noelle McCarthy and Kate Camp discuss their recent books in which they look back at their younger selves, finding both darkness and humour.
For one year in 1986, Kate Camp kept a daily diary. In her new book Leather & Chains, she writes back to that 13-year-old self. Encountering the pages from the distance of 40 years, Kate finds iconic 80s touchstones, swaggering bravado, vulnerability, and the linguistic fireworks of the proto-writer.
Noelle McCarthy’s new book, Stakes, brings her Irish Catholic girlhood obsession with Dracula into collision with the world of the 2020s, #MeToo, and the horrors emerging from Irish soil.
They join Kate Duignan for a conversation about hungry girls, and the ones who get invited through the door.
Left: Kate Camp, photo by Ebony Lamb. Right: Noelle McCarthy, photo by Kristine Crabb
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Writers on Mondays: Uncanny Valley – pip adam, Terri Te Tau, and Tim Corbalis
Three brilliant novelists discuss their exciting and inventive new novels, writing the weird present, and possible futures.
Mon 31 Aug 2026, 12.15 to 1.15
Event Ngā kaupapa motuhake
Writers on Mondays series
The International Institute of Modern Letters presents a series of events highlighting the very latest work of Aotearoa New Zealand writers. A lively and stimulating way to begin the week.
From Mon 6 July