Top media critics feature at Auckland Writers Festival

The Auckland Writers Festival looks set to break further records with its 2015 line-up, announced last night.

The festival is in its 15th year and has steadily widened its appeal beyond fiction and poetry to include some of the world’s top non-fiction writers.

This helped boost ticket sales 45% last year and attracted more than 55,000 attendees to sessions, including several sellout ones in the Aotea Centre’s main auditorium.

Among this year’s 150 authors are New Yorker media critic Ken Auletta, whose books include Googled: The End of the World as We Know It and a study of Rupert Murdoch’s empire.

Auletta has also profiled Guardian investigative journalist and author Nick Davies, who broke the News of the World phone hacking story. He will present a session on his book of the affair, Hack Attack.

Auletta and Davies will both participate in the University of Auckland Festival Debate on whether the right to offend is absolute under the chairmanship of Linda Clark.

English science writer Philip Ball, who has produced 20 books on just about every topic from how music works to chemistry texts, will discuss one of his most recent books: Serving the Reich: The Struggle for the Soul of Physics Under Hitler.

One of the world’s most influential medical writers, Atul Gawande, will talk about his most recent work Being Mortal: Medicine and What Happens in the End.

Scottish actor Alan Cumming (Taggart, The Good Wife and X-Men) will present a programme based on his highly praised memoir Not My Father’s Son.

BBC journalist and author Bill Hayton will give the Michael King lecture on the geo-political struggle for the South China Sea.

The international fiction lineup is headed by Japan’s Haruki Murakami, rated as among of the world’s best, David Mitchell (Cloud Atlas, The Bone Clocks) and Nigerian-born Booker Prize winner Ben Okri (The Famished Road).

The Australian contingent includes former Wallaby player Peter FitzSimons, who is now that country’s bestselling biographer; novelist Helen Garner, whose most recent title is The House of Grief; and Tim Winton, who has been named a Living Treasure.

The Good Women of China writer Xinran will talk about her latest work, Buy Me The Sky.

The Auckland Writers Festival runs from May 12-17 at various venues around the city