As a writer and advocate Dame Fiona Kidman has contributed an astonishing amount to NZ literature. Born in Hawera in 1940, she has published more than 30 works – fiction, non-fiction, short stories, poetry, plays – and has been a script writer, radio producer, journalist and librarian. She has won several national and international awards, holds both an Order of the British Empire and a NZ Order of Merit for services to literature, and is the recipient of a Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement. From her first novel, A Breed of Women (1979) through to two books in 2016 – the novel All Day at the Movies and the poetry collection This Change in the Light – her ability to delve deeply into character and subject so illuminating the ordinary and the extraordinary, is evident. Kidman has also dedicated herself to the literary community: she has been a national president of PEN (NZ) and of the NZ Book Council, and a founding trustee of the Randell Cottage Writers Trust. Known and respected for her warmth, humour and insight, Dame Fiona Kidman is our 2017 Auckland Writers Festival Honoured New Zealand Writer. Chaired by Paula Morris. AUCKLAND WRITERS FESTIVAL 2017

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“What did the council decide on item 42?” — answered with the speaker and the moment.

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