What you need to know about Verb + LitCrawl

Not long to go until Verb Festival and LitCrawl Wellington is on! Between 6 – 10 November there is a lot to see, listen to and experience. Here are a few tips:

Passes save you money
Our ticket passes can save you up to 40 per cent and they are very easy to purchase. There’s a 4-trip, 6-trip and Wing It Pass (go to anything and everything). See more info on those here.

The Lie Down & Listen events are nearly sold out
These are limited capacity events in the Freemason’s Lodge in Wellesley Boutique Hotel. On Thursday 7 Nov you can listen to Elizabeth Knox, Helen Vivienne Fletcher and James McNaughton read from their work while you close your eyes and take it all in. On Friday seven spectacular poets including Poet Laureate David Eggleton, Cilla McQueen, Hannah Mettner and essa may ranapiri will be filling the space with their poetry.

You can see some of Aotearoa’s and the World’s best writers
Renée, Patricia Grace, Val McDermid, Michael Connelly, Catherine Robertson, Tina Makereti, Sarah Moss, Sinéad Gleeson, Tayi Tibble, Shayne Carter, Christos Tsiolkas, and Chen Chen. Just to name a few. There are more than 160 in the programme.

There is a literary drag party on Friday night
Curated by Chris Tse, this is a time to revel in performances from The Bombay Bombshell, Bunny Holiday (House of Drag), Hariel, Lord Bi-Ron, True d’Heaux, and 2019 Mx Capital Drag champion Willy SmacknTush. There will be lip-syncs to lit-inspired songs. See you there. Information and tickets here.

You can take the family on adventures
Our family programme takes you on a story hunt through Porirua Library (KidsCrawl), a stroll through Polhill Reserve to learn about the many and amazing species that live there (with The Meaning of Trees author Robert Vennell, Capital Kiwi’s Paul Ward, and rongo? practitioner Arihia Latham).
There’s a morning of adventure tales with pilot, mountaineer, and dad, Mike Allsop and ecologist Robert Vennell (including morning tea!). And TWO book launch parties by two of Aotearoa’s best publishers, Gecko Press and Huia Publishers.
Full family programme here.

LitCrawl is on Saturday 9 November and is the lit party of the year.
We have 26 events in 23 venues in just over three hours. Study the programme, make your choices, get your friends, have a great time. Full LitCrawl programme here.

There will be a chance to write your own comic on a large scale
Sarah Laing is a Wellington-based artist and writer who makes the most wonderful comics. Thanks to support from Wellington City Council we have worked with Sarah to make a HUGE comic for the Te Auaha windows. The best bit is that you can decide what the characters will say. The Talking Mural will be up on 27 October, we’ll update with how it all works online here.

Image: Two of the gorgeous books that feature in KidsCrawl Porirua! The Bomb won the Margaret Mahy Book of the Year at the 2019 NZ Book Awards for Children & Young Adults. And Puffin the Architect won the NZ Booklovers Award for Best Children’s Book.

The author / illustrators Sacha Cotter & Josh Morgan, and Kimberly Andrews will be a KidsCrawl and we can’t wait. FREE but registration required. Full info here.

We are honoured to be one of 7 international book festivals selected to send one writer to this year’s Cheltenham Literature Festival, to celebrate their 70th anniversary (wow!).

Poet Chris Tse, our inaugural guest curator, is winging his way over to the UK to take part, including in this delicious looking showcase event.

Verb Festival director, Claire Mabey, is also heading over and will send proud festival mum photos via Verb’s twitter @verbwellington.