10 Books Lizzy Wants After Auckland Writer's Festival

After 17 events and countless conversations at the incredible Auckland Writer's Festival, I now have a TBR pile as big as my lifetime with not only back catalogue titles for authors I already love, but also many authors who I had never really considered or come across before. Here's a very paired down list of 10 books I need to buy urgently (don't tell my husband) and why they wriggled their way into my already very full reading list. 

You can also find the full collection on our website for easy buying!

The winner of this year's Jean Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction, this collection of short stories is not one I might have picked up naturally but after attending Ingrid's session where she described the themes and connections of these stories I immediately added it to the top of the list. These 9 stories are about women and domesticity, about climate change and our connection to the land, and about the echoes through time and generation. I cannot wait to start this.

I went to an event called The Mother of All Journeys which involved author of Seed, Elisabeth Easther, in conversation with Emma Neale who was there to talk about her new book Maybe Baby. After hearing more about the slightly speculative premise of this book (a man taking part in the first ever trial of a man growing a baby) I was sold.

One of my favourite sessions of the weekend was one about AI and authors, including an incredible panel of authors Karen Hao, Claire Mabey, and Catherine Chidgey. Karen Hao's book about AI looks deeply into the recklessness with which the major companies behind this technology are proceeding, and our obligation and responsibility as global citizens to be informed and empowered. I am excited to learn more through her book!

I love adding to my small but impactful poetry collection and this winner of this year's Ockham Prize for Poetry will need to come home with me at some stage soon. Nafanua read one of her sharp and clever poems on stage and it was something very different to others I tend to read! She writes in this collection about violence and love, about destruction and regeneration, about the power and enigma of language.

Hannah Kent has been on my radar and I'm in love with the sound of her book Always Home, Always Homesick - it's a memoir about Hannah's journey to Iceland, a love letter to both the place itself but also a love letter to her journey of creativity becoming an author and finding wonder through her words. 

As a self professed big fan of "Weird Girl Lit" you would think I had already read Bora Chung but somehow I have not! Cursed Bunny is a collection of short stories with a supernatural edge and a sharp edged view of society and capitalism. It's a little bit horror, a little bit humour, a little bit of magic and a little bit of science - basically right up my alley.

I went to a really fun panel about the rise of romance and Shanna Tan was one of the participants - she is an amazing translator for a lot of Korean fiction including this cozy slice of life novel. She has introduced me to the genre of K-Light, a specifically lighthearted and hopeful genre of Korean novels that make life that little bit less intense. This one is set in a magical laundromat that can cleanse painful experiences and I'm so ready to escape into it for a little while. For a complete polar opposite, translator Shanna Tan was also telling us about a very different book she has worked on that I also immediately added to my wishlist - Plant Lady is a feminist Horror and I'm all over this genre at the moment!

A book about the elements on a remote Scottish Shetland island, a chaotic writer, a lighthouse keeper, and a brief appearance from the ghost of Robert Louis Stevenson?! This sounds incredible interesting and inventive, and I am also just enamoured with the stunning cover. 

I was meant to be going to a different talk that ended up clashing with a meet and greet with RF Kuang (!!) so I was very kindly given the option to swap events and as a last minute decision went along to an author who sounded faintly familiar but was very new to me. Turns out Louise is not new to most people, an indigenous American writer who has a prolific back catalogue. I adored listened to her in conversation, and immediately bought her book of short stories, but this is her latest novel Mighty Red and I do think I may need this one too.

Luckily this one isn't out yet but I do immediately want to pre-order it after hearing R.F. Kuang talk about the inspiration behind this coming-of-age story. As always it's a book preoccupied in the best way with language and how our language defines us. It's grounded in grief but also in love, and in absurdity of being human. It's going to be another masterpiece and I'm so excited to read it soon!

Did you go along this year to any events? Have you ended up adding any new books to your own TBR? If so please let us know and share in the comments below so that I can feel less alone in the optimism I have about how much reading I can do in one life time!