About

Kia ora koutou
Welcome to RAWA 2024 and welcome to the stunning Te Pātaka o Rākaihautū, Banks Peninsula!

We hope you will come to our readers and writers festival in Akaroa and be inspired by our fabulous lineup of speakers and range of topics that will engage your minds and hearts.

We believe in the power of literature to shape lives and our aim is to bring together a community of readers and writers in an intimate regional festival where people can engage with, and learn from, the very best New Zealand authors.

This year our impressive programme has over 25 sessions to choose from. Our award-winning speakers, whom you will find in the list below, bring an even greater diversity of genres than we had last year with fiction and non-fiction strands that both readers and writers will enjoy. RAWA will be hosted at Akaroa’s historic Gaiety Theatre with sessions in the fabulous Coronation Library and in our impressive new Matariki Centre, all close by, in the centre of the township.
 

So put the event in your calendar, and register for a wonderful weekend spent in the company of readers and writers. It’s the perfect time and place to re-charge your reading and writing batteries!

Mā te wā,
Marie Connolly