Shifting points of view gives you a bumper crop of sessions from top writers and commentators. It's WORD Christchurch's part of the Christchurch Arts Festival and is guaranteed to warm the cockles of your enquiring mind.

There were five sessions on Sunday 30 August - practically a mini-bookfest. Patricia Grace, Anna Smaill, Paula Morris, and Fiona Farrell were among the Kiwi writers on show, and also international writers Jesse Bering (talking about perversion, no less) and Suki Kim about North Korea. And on Monday 7 September there are two evening sessions - one on altruism with Peter Singer, and one with novelist Sarah Waters - author of The Paying Guest and Tipping the Velvet. Blimey.

Our approach is to show off what's on offer, but also to link to our catalogue so you can get reading. And book your tickets, because things do sell out! You can either pay $20 per session or buy a $115 Shifting Points of View pass, on sale NOW.

Our blog posts on Shifting Points of View

• Patricia Grace and Paula Morris: On Belonging
• Imaginary Cities: Fiona Farrell, Anna Smaill, Hamish Clayton, Hugh Nicholson, chaired by Lara Strongman
• Quick questions with Anna Smaill
• Margaret Wilson: The Struggle for sovereignty
• Quick questions with Margaret Wilson
• Quick questions with Suki Kim
• A half circle journey: Suki Kim and North Korea
• Jesse Bering: On Perversion
• Pride and Perversion
• Sarah Waters

Photos

Here's the programme in full:

Sunday 30 August

10am On Belonging: Patricia Grace and Paula Morris

...  Patricia Grace explores issues that permeate New Zealand history and society: racial intolerance, cross-cultural conflicts and the universal desire to belong. Spanning several decades and set against the backdrop of a changing New Zealand, Chappy is a story of enduring love. She discusses her work with Paula Morris, whose On Coming Home explores similar themes of nostalgia, memory and belonging ...

Find works in our catalogue by:

• Patricia Grace
• Paula Morris

12pm Imaginary Cities: Fiona Farrell, Anna Smaill, Hamish Clayton, Hugh Nicholson, chaired by Lara Strongman

Taking the Christchurch blueprint as a starting point, this panel will look at ways in which we imagine cities, either in fiction, in history, or in contemporary life; whether as utopias or dystopias, cities imagined or reimagined.

Find works in our catalogue by:

• Fiona Farrell
• Anna Smaill
• Hamish Clayton
• Lara Strongman

Read:

• Quick questions with Anna Smaill
• Masha's interview with Anna Smaill

2pm The Struggle for Sovereignty: Margaret Wilson

Margaret Wilson argues that the shift to a neo-liberal public policy framework has profoundly affected the country’s sovereignty and that New Zealanders must continue to engage in the struggle to retain it for the sake of individual and community wellbeing.

• Find works in our catalogue by Margaret Wilson
• Quick questions with Margaret Wilson

4pm On North Korea: Inventing the Truth: Suki Kim, chaired by Paula Morris

A glimpse inside the mysterious closed-off world of North Korea, a country where a military dictatorship exploits the myth of a Great Leader to its own citizens, who are “imprisoned in a gulag posing as a nation”.

Find works in our catalogue by Suki Kim.

Read:

• Quick questions with Suki Kim
• A half circle journey: Suki Kim and North Korea

6pm On Perversion: Jesse Bering

Jesse Bering argues that we are all sexual deviants on one level or another. He challenges us to move beyond our attitudes towards ‘deviant’ sex and consider the alternative: what would happen if we rise above our fears and revulsions and accept our true natures? (Adult themes)

Find works in our catalogue by Jess Bering

Read Pride and Perversion.

Monday 7 September

6pm On Effective Altruism: Peter Singer, chaired by Eric Crampton

Effective altruism requires a rigorously unsentimental view of charitable giving, urging that a substantial proportion of our money or time should be donated to the organisations that will do the most good with those resources ...

Find works in our catalogue by Peter Singer

8pm Crimes of Passion: Sarah Waters, chaired by Carole Beu

Sarah Waters’ hugely inventive novels usually have lesbian relationships at their heart, and are always set in the past, when remaining true to oneself came at great personal risk.

Find works in our catalogue by Sarah Waters