Great escape
Running from October 12 to 16, Tauranga’s Escape Festival brings some of the best writers and thinkers to the Bay for a little celebration of big ideas.
Impressive writing, journalism and thinking is what makes up this series of invigorating talks and panel discussions. Here are some of the authors featured and highlights to look forward to at Escape 2022.
Gangland
In Gangland, Tauranga’s own award-winning investigative reporter Jared Savage shines a light into New Zealand's rising underworld of organised crime. His stories go behind the headlines and reveal an invisible world that’s frighteningly close to home - in which millions of dollars are made, life is cheap and allegiances can change with the pull of a trigger. Gangland also reveals the wider social issues facing Aotearoa, including gangs and our illicit drug market. Over the past 20 years, dealers have graduated from motorcycle gangs to Asian crime syndicates and now the Mexican cartels - the most dangerous drug lords in the world.
One in Four
One in Four is an intimate kōrero between recently retired fertility counsellor and author of Maybe Baby Sue Saunders; actor and author Michelle Langstone, who writes about her IVF journey in her outstanding novel Times Like These; and journalist, actor (Shortland Street) and writer Elisabeth Easther.
Barrister Kathryn Lellman, who has sponsored this special event, says, “One area of speciality for me in my family law practice is surrogacy and adoption, and I am endlessly fascinated by the ways through which we can now make babies and constitute families and how that is reflected legally. I am acutely aware of the challenges fertility issues bring to families. It is going to be a fascinating, heartfelt session.”
The Mirror Book
Shortlisted for the 2022 Ockham Book Awards, Charlotte Grimshaw’s explosive and thought-provoking memoir The Mirror Book is a vivid account of growing up in one of New Zealand’s most well-known literary families: That of poet, novelist and memoirist CK Stead. Grimshaw says, “When I became a writer I took a different surname from my father’s to distinguish myself from him. But later on in life I discovered I was still very enmeshed in our family fictions, and my memoir The Mirror Book is an account of challenging those fictions, forming my own opinions and finally achieving my own sense of a truly independent self. I received ferocious reactions before the book was published, and when I showed the manuscript to some members of my family. I wanted to publish the book even though I knew it would be difficult.” In conversation with Michelle Langstone, Grimshaw deep-dives into this truth, the fallout, and the messy reality of family life.
Too Much Money
Today, someone in the wealthiest one percent of adults in Aotearoa – a club of 40,000 people – has a net worth 68 times that of the average New Zealander. Max Rashbrooke’s Too Much Money is the story of how wealth inequality is changing Aotearoa. This talk addresses a conversation most New Zealanders prefer to avoid: class. Chief Philanthropic Officer at the Michael and Suzanne Borrin Foundation, Tupe Solomon-Tanoa’i speaks with Rashbrooke and final Chair of Auckland District Health Board and company director Pat Snedden about the evidence of - and the possible solutions to - our inequality issues, and asks us to consider whether we really can reduce wealth disparities to a point where most people are doing well.
NUKU: Story Sovereignty
In 2021 the much-celebrated book, NUKU: Stories of 100 Indigenous Women was released, platforming Indigenous wāhine and giving them ownership over their narrative in an unfiltered, uninterrupted way. Through telling their stories, the women in NUKU seek to influence the world around them. In this powerful panel session, NUKU founder, creator and publisher Qiane Matata-Sipu (Te Waiohua, Waikato, Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Pikiao and Cook Islands) discusses story sovereignty with two formidable Tauranga wāhine – Pāpāmoa-based marine ecologist, Professor Kura Paul-Burke (Ngāti Awa, Ngāti Whakahemo), filmmaker and producer Chelsea Winstanley (Ngāti Ranginui, Ngāi te Rangi), alongside racial equity educator, Kat Poi (Tainui, Te Arawa, Tonga) from Courageous Conversations South Pacific. These women will generously share their stories – the good and ugly – and wrestle with how story sovereignty could be improved today in Aotearoa.