Letter to my Art Mother

BOOK NOW

A line-up of six writers perform an address to their “art mother” – the figure who has best nurtured their dreams, their ambitions; the figure who has guided them through hardship and into the light of a new day. Or is an art mother a figure to push against, and prove wrong? Find out when Dr Rachel Buchanan (Taranaki iwi Te Ātiawa, Taranaki Whaanui ki te Upoko o Te Ika), Matariki Bennett (Ngāti Pikiao, Ngāti Whakaue, Ngāti Hinerangi), Henrietta Bollinger, Elizabeth Knox, Kate Camp, Khadro Mohamed and more weave an hour of transportive, surprising storytelling.

See the full list of Writers events below.

About

Pictured L-R.

Dr Rachel Buchanan (Taranaki iwi, Te Ātiawa, Taranaki Whaanui ki te Upoko o Te Ika) is a historian, journalist and a member of Te Aro Pā Poets collective and Te Pouhere Kōrero Māori Historians Network. She is the author of The Parihaka Album: Lest We Forget (Huia, 2009), Stop Press: The Last Days of Newspapers (Scribe, 2013) and Ko Taranaki Te Maunga (Bridget Williams Books, 2018). Her pukapuka Te Motunui Epa (Bridget Williams Books, 2022) was the co-winner of the 2023 W.H. Oliver Prize, co-winner of the 2023 Ernest Scott Prize and shortlisted for the 2023 Ockham NZ Book Awards – Booksellers Aotearoa New Zealand Award for Illustrated Non-Fiction. Her impressive career as a writer, gained her a position as one of three finalists in the inaugural Keri Hulme Award at the 2023 Pikihuia Awards. Dr Buchanan has just been awarded the 2025 Judith Binney Fellowship. The Fellowship will allow her to take at least 12 months away from paid employment and to focus, completely, on writing, thinking and research in Aotearoa and in Te Ao Moemoea (Australia).

Henrietta (Etta) Bollinger is a writer and disability rights advocate. Henrietta has had poetry published in Starling, Mimicry and Scum magazines and plays performed in New Zealand, Australia and the UK. Their first book is Articulations, published by Tender Press.

Elizabeth Knox is an acclaimed novelist and essayist. Her novel The Vintner’s Luck won the Deutz Medal for Fiction in the 1999 Montana New Zealand Book Awards, and the Tasmania Pacific Region Prize, and is published in thirteen languages. Dreamhunter won the 2006 Esther Glen Medal, and its sequel, Dreamquake, was a Michael L Printz Honor book for 2008 and, in the same year, was named an ALA, a CCBC, Booklist, and New York Library best book. A collection of essays, The Love School, won the biography and memoir section of the New Zealand Post book awards in 2009. Mortal Fire won a NZ Post Children’s book award and was a finalist in the LA Times Book Awards. Elizabeth’s most recent novel is Kings of This World.

Elizabeth is an Arts Foundation Laureate and was made an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit in 2002.

Kate Camp is the author of many collections of poems, including The Mirror of Simple Annihilated Souls (winner of the 2011 NZ Post Book Award for Poetry) and How to Be Happy Though Human: New and Selected Poems (2020), and a collection of essays, You Probably Think This Song Is About You (2022). Her most recent book is Makeshift Seasons (2025), a new collection of poetry. Kate was born in 1972 and lives in Wellington.

Matariki Bennett is a 23 year old award-winning Slam Poet and Filmmaker. She released her first pukapuka, e kō, nō hea koe in May 2025. She is a founding member of Ngā Hinepūkōrero, a bilingual Wāhine Māori Slam Poetry Collective, who in 2021, were honoured with the Creative New Zealand Ngā Manu Pirere Award, recognising outstanding emerging Māori artists. In 2023, Matariki was the Wellington Poetry Slam Champion. Matariki co-wrote and co-directed, 'Te Kohu' (2022) and directed the short documentary, 'Wind, Song and Rain’ (2022). Whakapapa, Te Reo Māori and Hītori are the tūāpapa of Matariki’s storytelling.