Eleanor Catton, the author of last year’s Man Booker prize winner The Luminaries, is among 22 writers, illustrators and graphic novelists from New Zealand scheduled to attend the Taipei International Book Exhibition in February.
Catton will be the first Man Booker prize winner to attend the fair, which is to feature New Zealand as its theme country, according to the Taipei Book Fair Foundation.
At 28, Catton became the youngest-ever winner of the Man Booker prize for her novel about a series of mysteries involving 12 characters in a small town in New Zealand.
Also scheduled to attend are Maori writer Witi Ihimaera, who is best-known for his novel-turned-movie The Whale Rider, and Joy Cowley, one of New Zealand’s most prolific writers of children’s books.
Best-selling crime novelist Paul Cleave, graphic novelist Tim Gibson, poet and anthologist Jenny Bornholdt, historian and novelist Joan Druett and award-winning children’s picture book writer and illustrator Gavin Bishop are also set to attend.
Visitors to the fair, which runs from Feb. 11 to Feb. 16 at Taipei World Trade Center’s Exhibition Halls 1 and 3, will be able to see them launch books, sign autographs and give talks, the organizer said.
The design of the New Zealand pavilion was inspired by the Maori talking stick, called the tokotoko. In Maori tradition, whoever holds the stick has the authority to talk.
By putting three tokotokos around the pavilion, it means anybody who is in the pavilion has the authority to talk, said Kevin Chapman, who heads the New Zealand theme country project. He said his team hopes to create a platform for conversations between New Zealanders and Taiwanese.
New Zealand Commerce and Industry Office in Taipei Director Si’alei van Toor on Monday said that she hopes the book fair next year strengthens bilateral cultural ties and shows Taiwanese the rich culture of her home country.
“New Zealand and Taiwan have a lot in common. We’re both island economies with strong links to our indigenous peoples,” she said.
“New Zealand tends to be well-known for its scenery and for its agriculture, and in certain parts of the world, for its rugby. We’d like to show we have a cultural side — and it is not just Maori — that we have a rich culture,” Chapman told reporters.
Prior to the book fair, three graphic novelists from New Zealand are slated to visit the nation to meet local graphic novelists as part of a program organized by the Ministry of Culture, the Publishers Association of New Zealand and the New Zealand Book Council.
Under the program, three graphic novelists from each country are to stay in residency in the other country and jointly create a bilingual Chinese and English graphic novel next year, the Taipei Book Fair Foundation said.
The annual Taipei International Book Exhibition is one of Asia’s largest book fairs. More than 1,000 publishers, writers, illustrators and experts in the publishing sector from around the world participated in this year’s fair.
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