INTRODUCING THE FARAWAY NEAR

Part of our mission is giving you folk access to astonishing international authors. But we’re in a pandemic. International travel is off. And we’re all sick of Zoom, right?

Introducing The Faraway Near: our custom digital venue that has the intimacy of a night at the pub with friends – and a favourite writer. It’s a pop-up bar with twelve tables of six. Grab a coffee or a glass of wine, and settle in for a session of deep storytelling and conversation with a special international guest – sitting life-sized at your table via freestanding FHD display.

Our guests are broadcast from their own homes around the world, and appear in informal conversation with a skilled interviewer who’s sitting with you at the bar. The bar will be open throughout, and you’ll have a chance to ask questions of your guest as well. It’s a world-first, right here in Ōtautahi.

Choose from sessions with: Helen Garner, Australian legend of fiction and non-fiction; Ruth Ozeki, author of My Year of Meats and now her new book The Book of Form and Emptiness; Helen Macdonald (sold out), author of Vesper Flights and the sublime H is for Hawk; New York-based novelist and podcaster Hari Kunzru, on alt-right rabbitholes; native American novelist Tommy Orange, author of the ground-breaking There, There; Kurdish novelist and activist Ava Homa in conversation with Behrouz Boochani; renowned English philosopher A. C. Grayling (sold out); and Irish writer Mark O’Connell, author of the pertinent Notes from an Apocalypse.

Don’t miss out; seats are limited!

Please note: Backlisted is no longer a part of The Faraway Near and Eliot Higgins has been moved to a different format.