Auckland Writers Festival 2026: The Happenstance Historians
Date: Friday 15 May 2026 Time: 2:30pm – 3:30pm Venue: Waitakere Room, Aotea Centre, Auckland
Olivia Spooner’s gripping WWII novels (most recently The American Boys) have been mainstays of New Zealand’s bestseller charts and were Auckland Libraries’ most-borrowed titles of 2025. Perhaps even more remarkable is that Spooner had no interest in history until her thirties, when an encounter with a wartime story piqued her curiosity.
For Australian author Hannah Kent, a story discovered during a teenage exchange year in Iceland became the seed for her global bestseller Burial Rites and changed her life’s course entirely.
Ockham NZ Book Awards longlisted Tracy Farr’s Wonderland—which imagines an alternative history for a real amusement park and Marie Curie on the Miramar Peninsula—began life from an overheard remark in a café.
I had the joy of chairing this conversation between three historical fiction powerhouses, and it was one of my all-time favourites. The highlight was hearing the readings: Olivia read from her grandfather’s wartime letters; Tracy and Hannah read from their books. The audience and I were overwhelmingly moved.
