THE GROOVE BOOK REPORT

You know the name - Edward Snowden  the man who risked everything to expose the U.S. government’s system of mass surveillance - tells us in his own words how he helped to build that system and what motivated him to try to bring it down. It's 2013 (it seems almost half a lifetime ago in this fast paced news-cycle world) a previously unknown security consultant and former Defense worker, twenty-nine-year-old Edward Snowden exploded onto the front page of all our newspapers, TV and internet pages.  He'd just come out with new information that shocked the world revealing that the American government was secretly collecting data on every single phone call, text message, and email their citizens ever created.   This was a Big Brother scenario that even Orwell could never have concieved.  If it had gone ahead, then the US Government could have created an unprecedented system of mass surveillance with the ability to pry into the private lives of every person on eart...

Public Trust Hall:  This is a new venue for Pōneke opening this week ahead of our opening night event on Wednesday 6 November. We are looking forward to bringing writers and their ideas into this new space for the City. To experience the Public Trust Hall at Verb Festival, get tickets to  Opening night ,  Collections Upon Collections ,  Val McDermid , and  Michael Connelly . Read more about the venue on  Stuff.co.nz here . Sarah Laing's Talking Mural This is just a fragment of a large scale re-writable mural that Sarah Laing has created for Verb Festival. It is a multi-faceted city scape of a Wellington just in our future (though you can spy the past... too!). You can send us words to put into the mouths of the characters -- just check out the instructions and the full picture  online here . The Mural will be upon the Te Auaha windows, 65 Dixon Street, from 27 October. Thank to Wellington City Council for supporting this project! LitCrawl on S...

www.hebookerprizes.com/fiction In a shock announcement, the judges of the 2019 Booker Prize for Fiction have tonight (Monday 14 October) awarded the prize to two authors: Margaret Atwood for  The Testaments  and Bernardine Evaristo for  Girl, Woman, Other . Margaret Atwood is the fourth author to have won the prize twice, Bernadine Evaristo is the first black woman to claim the prize since it began in 1969. Atwood's book The Testaments  is the third sequel to have won the prize, following Pat Parker’s  The Ghost Road  (1995) and Hilary Mantel’s Bring Up the Bodies  (2012) This is not the first time a joint award has been decided.  In fact it's happened twice before, to Nadine Gordimer and Stanley Middleton in 1974 and to Michael Ondaatje and Barry Unsworth in 1992. Atwood and Evaristo were announced by chair of judges, Peter Florence at a dinner at London’s Guildhall at a ceremony hosted by TV presenter and judge of the ‘The Lost Man ...

The Nobel Prize in Literature for 2018 has been awarded to the Polish author Olga Tokarczuk for "a narrative imagination that with encyclopedic passion represents the crossing of boundaries as a form of life." The Nobel Prize in Literature for 2019 is awarded to the Austrian author Peter Handke for "an influential work that with linguistic ingenuity has explored the periphery and the specificity of human experience." Announcement of the Nobel Prizes in Literature for 2018 and 2019, presented by Mats Malm, Permanent Secretary of the Swedish Academy, on 10 October 2019. Not that long ago we learned that 2018's Nobel Prize in Literature had to be postponed because of a nasty scandal involving sexual assault allegedly committed by a member of the Swedish Academy’s husband. Now that's all blown over normal service has resumed and the delayed 2018 Nobel awarded to Polish writer/activist Olga Tokarczuk.  Tokarczuk also took out the 2018 Man Booke...

Katherine Mansfield's early childhood home in Wellington is about to reopen to the public after a much needed makeover - inside and out. It's taken five months to replace the roof and damaged weather boarding, and repaint and fix up the interior rooms and include more approriate period furniture. Even the gardens recieved some much needed TLC. There's an open home on Sunday October the 13th, the day before Mansfield's birthday. Katherine Mansfield (KM to us) is New Zealand’s most internationally famous author. She wrote short stories, poetry, letters, journals and reviews, and changed the way the short story was written in the English language.  As a woman and an artist she led the way for many more.  She was a rebel and a modernist who lived her short life of 34 years to the full.  Her life spanned a time when gender roles for women underwent a radical change. Kathleen Mansfield Beauchamp was born on 14 October 1888 at Wellington, New Zealand, in a smal...

Poet Laureate at Auckland University and Verb feature writer Dr Selina Tusitala MArsh is a bit of a literary rock star.  She has Samoan, Tuvaluan, English, Scottish and French whakapapa, which she blends into her poetry like fibres in a complex rope of many colours.  She was the first Pacific Islander to graduate with a PHD in English from Auckland University. She's now an associate professor of Pasifika literature and, understandably a champion of the cultures of the Pacific.  Her first book of poetry, Fast Talking PI , won the Jessie MacKay Award for Best First Book of Poetry in 2010.   Since then, she's been a regular at Litcrawl, WOMAD and Arts Festival events.   "When I was 10 I was teased for having big hair.  Not just thick curly hair but wild Afakasi hair." Selina Tusitala Marsh Mophead is the story of her own personal journey, to be and remain diverse self, to earn the credits, the degrees but to remain her own...

Can you believe it's been 10 years since Smith wrote the book based on a song he'd penned back in 2005.  That tune was inspired by a pretty bad 'Dad' joke: "What do you call a donkey with three legs? - A wonky donkey".  Still it can't have been that bad because in 2010 it became a book and was featured in a viral video of a grandmother laughing hysterically as she attempted to read it to her grandchild, leading to a surge in purchases of the book worldwide.  What more do you need? Over the years this book has become a classic, with the expression 'Wonkey Donkey' even finding it's way into the local vernacular - an expression to describe an item that's a bit imperfect, ill fitting or wobbly.  You have to ask "why does this work?"  The usual reasons, repetition, slightly dodgy scenarios, silly ideas, and bright colours.  Plus the story is in a song form, which makes it easy to remember and repeat - all the same elements th...