Starting up

Wed 12 September

Welcome to the billionth blog site on the planet.  I'll be using it, to begin with, to post news about my (our) forthcoming trip to Berlin and Frankfurt. No time for much else at present as we are in the final hectic 10-day countdown to heading off for more than 6 weeks.

First stop London where Diane and I will be taking part in a symposium at the New Zealand Studies Network at Birkbeck College on Saturday 29 September, starting at 10 a.m. So if you are reading this from the London area, go to http://www.nzstudies.com and book in. I'll be talking about the Wakefield Literary Tradition (with a Dickens connection) and Diane about 'Addiction to Narrative'.

We arrive in Berlin on 1 October for interviews and events around the new German edition of my novel To Each His Own  - Jedem das Seine - and my other German novels. The highlight looks like a literary cruise on a restaurant ship on the Havel on Sunday 7 October.

We get to Frankfurt in time for the official opening of the Book Fair and on Wednesday 10th I'll be in the NZ Pavilion with Witi Ihimaera and Cath Dunsford talking to the topic 'Aotearoa New Zealand - Traditions and Landscape in Contemporary NZ Fiction.' The title is almost as long as the mere 5 minutes each we'll have to address this weighty topic!! Watch out for the T shirt.

Then on Friday 12th I'll be flying solo in the Focus on Travel Gallery in the Main exhibition hall, talking about Natural New Zealand: 10 - 11a.m. Hall 3.1, L691. Lots of pictures.

On 15 October, Diane and I will escape the super-heated air of the Frankfurt Book Fair for the warm waters of Crete. New book? New poems for sure.

www.philiptemple.co.nz