Auckland Writers Festival

There are approximately three million robots working in factories around the world, and another 30 million in people’s homes. Soon robots will outnumber humans. But what happens if an autonomous AI harms or kills a person, deliberately or accidentally? It will happen. In fact, it already has. In Machines Behaving Badly, Professor Toby Walsh – Laureate Fellow and Scientia Professor of Artificial Intelligence at UNSW Sydney, and a leading advisor to the UN on lethal autonomous weapons (aka killer robots) discusses a future where machines start to shape society in ways we are not aware of. Described as a ‘rock star of Australia’s digital revolution’ he explores such questions as whether robots can have rights and if Alexa is racist with Toby Manhire. Supported by Platinum Patrons Dame Rosie & Michael Horton. SAT, 20 MAY 2023, 11:30am – 12:30pm, Kiri Te Kanawa Theatre, Aotea Centre.

Pip Williams’ best-selling novel The Dictionary of Lost Words tells the story of motherless Esme who spends her childhood in the Scriptorium, a garden shed in Oxford where her father and a team of lexicographers gather words for the first Oxford English Dictionary. Over time she discovers words relating to women’s experiences often go unrecorded. The novel won numerous awards including the 2021 ABIA General Fiction Book of the Year. In Williams’ latest novel, The Bookbinder of Jericho, her talent for historical research and beautiful storytelling shines through in the story of twin sisters who work in the bindery at Oxford University Press in Jericho. She discusses who gets to make knowledge, who gets to access it, and what is lost when it is withheld with Sonya Wilson. SUN, 21 MAY 2023, 1:00pm – 2:00pm, Kiri Te Kanawa Theatre, Aotea Centre.

The judges for the winning 2022 Booker Prize praised Shehan Karunatilaka’s novel The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida for the ‘ambition of its scope, and the hilarious audacity of its narrative techniques’. Set in Sri Lanka during the 25- year civil war, a murdered photographer has seven days to solve the mystery of his own death. It’s a philosophical tale but at the heart of the novel is the horror of a devastating conflict. ‘Sri Lankans specialise in gallows humour. It’s our coping mechanism’, said Karunatilaka. With renewed political and economic crisis in his country, Karunatilaka discusses with Brannavan Gnanalingam how the corruption and race-baiting of the past is still having its ghostly effects on current tumultuous times. Supported by Asia New Zealand Foundation / Te Whītau Tūhono. SAT, 20 MAY 2023, 4:00pm – 5:00pm, Kiri Te Kanawa Theatre, Aotea Centre.

The Book of Roads and Kingdoms brings to life a dazzling culture of science, literature, philosophy and adventure arising out of the flourishing metropolis of Baghdad during Islam’s Golden Age. Australian writer / broadcaster Richard Fidler recounts how medieval Persian and Arab wanderers ventured by camel, horse and boat into the unknown, bringing back tales of wonder, horror and delight. Ever curious, Fidler’s previous bestsellers have also delved entertainingly into the history of worldly places – The Golden Maze (Prague), Ghost Empire (Constantinople) and Saga Land (Iceland). The host of ABC’s Conversations – Australia’s most downloaded podcast – speaks with broadcaster Jack Tame about what he describes as a ‘crazy quilt atlas of a lost world’. Supported by Platinum Bold Patrons Joséphine & Ross Green. SAT, 20 MAY 2023, 2:30pm – 3:30pm, Kiri Te Kanawa Theatre, Aotea Centre.

Delightfully inventive and witty, Daniel Lavery (as Mallory Ortberg) was the cofounder of The Toast, the pop-culture platform with literary depth that described its target audience as ‘librarians’. The best-selling author of Texts from Jane Eyre and Merry Spinster, next wrote Something that May Shock and Discredit You, an exhilarating series of essays combining personal revelations with cultural deepdives. With chapter introductions such as ‘When You Were Younger and You Got Home Early and You Were the First One Home and No One Else Was Out on the Street, Did You Ever Worry That the Rapture Had Happened Without You? I Did’, Lavery hilariously toggles between his transition, his religious upbringing, and the evolving relationship with the women in his life, while riffing on the Golden Girls, Lord Byron, Rilke, Anne of Green Gables, Columbo, and the cast of Mean Girls. He chats with Claire Mabey. FRI, 19 MAY 2023, 4:00pm – 5:00pm, Kiri Te Kanawa Theatre, Aotea Centre.

In the opening paragraphs of Stella Prize shortlisted Indelible City: Dispossession and Defiance in Hong Kong, author Louisa Lim is torn between journalistic neutrality and her love of Hong Kong as she is invited by guerrilla sign painters to grab a brush and help produce pro-democracy banners. An award-winning journalist who reported from China for a decade, Lim’s first book The People’s Republic of Amnesia – Tiananmen Revisited resulted in her being unable to visit the mainland again for years. Bridges burnt, she had nothing to lose. When the Hong Kong protests began over concerns about an extradition treaty, and escalated to a crackdown on freedom of expression, Lim found herself uniquely placed to capture the city’s untold history, just as it was being erased. Lim, a former correspondent for the BBC and NPR, is now a Senior Lecturer at University of Melbourne. Lim shares her raw experience of ‘dispossession and defiance in Hong Kong’ with Sam Sachdeva, author of The China Tightrope. Supported by Asia New Zealand Foundation / Te Whītau Tūhono. FRI, 19 MAY 2023, 5:30pm – 6:30pm, Kiri Te Kanawa Theatre, Aotea Centre.

With open source AI chatbots capable of generating text that appears increasingly human, will they eventually replace writers altogether? Some claim that AI will never have enough creativity, empathy or originality – but over time could even these qualities be assimilated by robotwriters? Canvas editor Sarah Daniell recently experimented with getting a bot to write her column. Alongside novelist Catherine Chidgey, she will interrogate two experts on whether they could relinquish the empty white page to a bot. Toby Walsh is Laureate Fellow and Scientia Professor of Artificial Intelligence at UNSW Sydney and author of Machines Behaving Badly and 2062: The World that AI Made. Te Taka Keegan is a Co-Director at University of Waikato’s Artificial Intelligence Institute, which has developed some of the most popular open-source tools in the world. He works on projects involving the use of te reo Māori and technology. Together they’ll discuss AI’s usefulness and limitations and what the future might look like when it comes to creative writing. Supported by Royal Society Te Apārangi. FRI, 19 MAY 2023, 4:00pm – 5:00pm, Hunua Room, Aotea Centre

Two-Spirit is a pan-Indigenous expression (FNMI – First Nations, Metis and Inuit) from Turtle Island (North America) reflecting complex understandings of gender roles, spirituality and a long history of diversity. Two-Spirit writer Joshua Whitehead (Oji-Cree member of the Peguis First Nation) took the word Indigenous and braided it with the word queer to create a new kind of worlding for his poetry collection Full Metal Indigiqueer. Next came awardwinning novel Jonny Appleseed with a triumphant main character who finds glittering and gritty indigiqueer ways to live off the reserve. Also an essayist, Whitehead discusses Two-Spirit identity and other Indigenous interpretations of gender with non-binary Mununjali poet and memoirist Ellen van Neerven, author of PERSONAL SCORE: Sport. Culture. Identity; and Indigenous scholar Kōtuku Titihuia Nuttall (Te Ātiawa, Ngāti Tūwharetoa, W- SÁNEĆ) whose hybrid collection Tauhou connects Aotearoa with Turtle Island. They speak with Māni Dunlop. First Nations series supported by the High Commission of Canada and the Australia Council for the Arts. SUN, 21 MAY 2023, 1:00pm – 2:00pm, Waitākere Room, Aotea Centre.

In Another Day in the Colony, Mununjali and South Sea Islander health activist Chelsea Watego has a chapter called F**k Hope. She urges her mob to be nihilistic because hope is the dream deferred, better to embrace sovereignty and take matters into your own hands. Sharing the conversation is podcaster and author Dr Emma Espiner (Ngāti Tukorehe, Ngāti Porou), who has an upcoming memoir There’s a Cure for This, and is an outspoken advocate for including Te Ao Māori within our healthcare system. They speak with Mihingarangi Forbes. First Nations series supported by the High Commission of Canada and the Australia Council for the Arts

How do fiction writers deal with Covid? Full-on or sideways? Stephanie Johnson embraces it with gusto in her new satirical novel Kind, a thriller set in lockdown, with devious plots, social blunders and superyachts. Fiona Farrell’s The Deck is set a little way into the future and borrows a motif of Giovanni Boccaccio’s The Decameron in which a small group gather to avoid contagion and pass the time telling stories. Both provide perspectives on what we have all recently endured, and together they’ll discuss with Anne Kennedy what was on their mind as they were writing. FRI, 19 MAY 2023, 4:00pm – 5:00pm, Limelight Room, Aotea Centre.