A day of presentations at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery as the hui entered its third day began with Mayor Dave Cull’s discussion of Dunedin’s literary past, from the legends and stories of Maori to the ship diaries of Scottish immigrants.
Many of the latter were written by women, which he said was a result of the Scottish valuing literacy for both boys and girls.
Mr Cull pointed to the city’s history of great writers, from Janet Frame and James K. Baxter to Hone Tuwhare.
Melanie Kidd has been involved with Dunedin City of Literature in her time in the city this year, but has worked for the Writers’ Centre Norwich, the body that led the bid for that city to become England’s first Unesco City of Literature in 2012.
She told the hui about Brave New Reads, an initiative begun in Norwich.
The project involved choosing 150 books recommended by readers, publishers and authors, all released in the previous two years.
Those were distributed to 120 readers.
"The readers read manically for six months," Ms Kidd said.
They rated and reviewed the books, then attended meetings "kind of like book clubs, but more like quite serious meetings" where discussion and argument took place about which books were loved or hated.
"We throw books at each other and we fight for the books we love."
After six months the books were "whittled down" at final selection meetings until just six were left.
"Our choice is based on books we consider brave, challenging, books that deserve respect and have some kind of literary fire."
The six books were promoted in libraries, more readers read them and the authors spoke at events.
"More people take risks in what they read" as a result, she said.The project required commitment and a love of literature.
"This is a book club like no other.
"It is about reading for change, and that was changing people’s reading habits, changing perceptions, changing as a reader and also sometimes it was changing the lesser known authors ‘ lives."
Noel Waite is a senior lecturer in the Master of communication design programme at RMIT University, in Melbourne, also a City of Literature.
He was a member of the steering committee that achieved that status for Dunedin in 2014, when he lived here.
He said the status, and the membership of a global network of 180 cities provided unique opportunity to "create, innovate and work collaboratively" towards a more creative and sustainable city.
