You are invited to hear NZSA President of Honour Witi Ihimaera 
deliver the 2023 NZSA Janet Frame Memorial Lecture
This year, NZSA President of Honour, Witi Ihimaera DCNZM, QSM, will deliver the 2023 Janet Frame Memorial Lecture in partnership with Wellington’s Verb Festival at The National Library of New Zealand. The event is free, but seating is limited. Please join us!
This event will be held November 9th, 6.30 to 8.30 pm, and is FREE to attend.
Please reserve your ticket HERE.
NZSA President Dr.Vanda Symon will introduce the lecture. The address will be followed by readings from young NZSA members. Join us upstairs in the library for refreshments, opera, and a signing with Unity Books. This is an open event.
Witi Ihimaera’s tenure as NZSA’s President of Honour coincides with his 50th Anniversary as New Zealand’s first published Māori novelist when Tangi was published in 1973. The Matriarch and Bulibasha each won a Wattie/Montana Book of the Year award, and Māori Boy, an Ockham. His work as a Māori and indigenous writer received an international Chevalier in the Order of Arts and Letters in 2017. Other works include Pounamu, Pounamu, Dream Swimmer, Nights in the Gardens of Spain, Sleeps Standing/Moetū, Native Son, Navigating the Stars: Māori Creation Myths, The Astromancer, and Whale Rider. Five of his books are now available in te reo.
Matua Witi has been a member of the NZSA Te Puni Kaituhi o Aotearoa for over 50 years. As President of Honour, he appeared across Aotearoa at NZSA Regional Roadshows to share his experiences and has championed this year’s formation of NZSA’s 9th branch for Māori writers. He affiliates to Te Whānau a Kai with a close connection to East Coast tribes.
He has been a board member of Creative New Zealand, the Māori Writers and Artists Society, Learning Media, and the New Zealand Film Commission, and is a patron of the 100 Books in Te Reo/Kotahi Rau Pukapuka Trust. For half a century, Witi has sustained a hardworking literary career alongside journalism, and international diplomacy, as a university teacher, and executive producer of three feature film/TV projects.
NZSA President Vanda Symon says “We are excited and honoured to have Matua Witi deliver the Janet Frame Memorial Lecture, especially as it is such a significant anniversary for both Witi and New Zealand literature being fifty years since the publication of his first novel Tangi.
NZSA CEO Jenny Nagle says, “The NZSA is delighted this year’s Janet Frame Memorial Lecture is being held in Wellington, to celebrate the significance of Witi’s achievements with Verb and The National Library of New Zealand.”
Each year, The NZSA President of Honour delivers the prestigious annual NZSA Janet Frame Memo
rial Lecture which celebrates and comments on New Zealand’s literary sector. Past NZSA JFM lectures can be heard on NZSA Live! Podcast series HERE.
This year’s event is held as part of VERB, at The National Library of New Zealand Auditorium, Molesworth St, Wellington, on November 9th.
