Students attend Auckland Writers Festival
Mrs Berry’s Year 11 English class is reading a dystopian novel, ‘Dry’, by an American author named Neal Shusterman, for our external exam at the end of the year. An opportunity arose to see the author in New Zealand at the Auckland Readers and Writers’ Festival. This festival is almost a week long and invites authors, poets and playwrights from all over the world to speak about their work and give suggestions and inspiration to aspiring writers. Mrs Berry thought this would be a great opportunity for our class because Neal Shusterman was one of the speaking authors.
Seeing and listening to Neal humanised the book in a way, and made the class realise that ‘Dry’ had been written by someone who had put a lot of thought and experience into it. Shusterman set his novel during a drought in Southern California to explore the nature of humanity and how people will react and treat each other during a crisis. It was really interesting listening to him talk about his journey to becoming a writer, from being a student at school with undiagnosed ADHD, to a famous author of many Young Adult Fiction books.
We also had the privilege of listening to three other writers: Lemn Sissay, an English poet; Lee Murray, a New Zealand speculative fiction author and Scotty Cotter, a New Zealand actor, playwright and director.
The talks were all different but engaging, and overall, it was a really positive experience for our class.
By Quillan Drum
