Travel Writers
The Lido
Centre Place, 501 Victoria Street, Hamilton
Saturday 12 August
12-1.30pm
Free
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Travel writers Graham Reid, Chris van Ryn, Elisabeth Easther and Jill Malcolm will talk with chair Gail Pittaway about their writing and where they are published. Our travel panel will talk about how they get commissioned to write about travel and related topics, and how they approach this job.
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Graham Reid was a senior feature writer at the NZ Herald for 17 years and has two award winning books. Postcards from Elsewhere is a book of travel stories published by Random House which won the Whitcoulls Travel Book of the Year award in 2006. His arts, music and travel writing has appeared in The Listener, the NZ Herald, Art News, Idealog, Life and Leisure, Weekend magazine, the Herald on Sunday, Real Groove, Let's Travel, Stack, elsewhere.co.nz and The Australian. Graham's second travel book,The Idiot Boy Who Flew published by Public Address Books won the Reader's Choice prize at the 2010 Cathay Pacific Travel Writing Awards.
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Graham is an experienced public speaker who is frequently interviewed on radio, television and in print about media, music, travel and the arts. He had a weekly radio programme Sidestreets on Kiwi FM as well as continuing interview slots on Radio New Zealand's Concert programme and most recently as a regular guest on Karyn Hay's programme on Radio Live. He has mentored a number of writers (fiction and non-fiction), is a regular guest lecturer at MAINZ in Auckland, has written a number of release-sheet biographies for New Zealand musicians, and judged various music and journalism awards.
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Chris van Ryn is a freelance writer and photographer whose work appears in various magazines including Life and Leisure, The Listener, AA Directions, North and South and MindFood. He has also been published in the Washington Post and the Meathe Chronicle and is often called upon to travel overseas on what the industry calls Famil's (where an airline or a tourist agency endeavouring to promote a destination invites a writer to a particular location and then to write about it for various magazines). Chris writes on other topics as a supplement to travel and engages in commercial photography. He will talk about how the freelance industry works and how people can make a start in the area. He will bring and talk about his self published book called Bodyography.
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Elisabeth Easther is a writer, actor, broadcaster and voice artist who mainly writes as a journalist. She is currently writing for magazines, newspapers and websites in New Zealand, America and Australia. Elisabeth is working on a one woman play about acclaimed ornithologist Perrine Moncreiff and also writing the script for a television series due to screen on TV1 called Islands of the Gulf. She has edited an anthology on NZ bird writing called Bird Words being published by Random House in October.
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Jill Malcolm has published six travel books and has been the editor of eight magazine publications, four of them dedicated to travel: Aorangi, AA Traveller, Air New Zealand Inflight (now Kia Ora), and Motorhomes Caravans and Destinations magazines. She has won several awards for magazine writing, and her book, At Home on the Road, won the inaugural Whitcoull’s Travel Book of the Year Award. She has judged travel writing awards both here and in Australia. Jill has taught creative and travel writing at the University of Auckland, and is now a tutor in journalism and travel writing for the New Zealand Institute of Business Studies. She frequently contributes to New Zealand and international publications.
This is a free event. You are welcome to buy refreshments from the counter and there is a $6 coffee and Florentine deal.
The Lido have a book exchange. You are encouraged to bring books you have read and exchange them for ones in their bookcase.
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