What I learned at the WORD Festival 2026

The WORD Festival is an annual collection of events in my home city of Ōtautahi Christchurch presented by and for local writers. Although some events hosted by the organisation happen throughout the year, the biggest concentration of them is in the first week of September, during the festival itself. The events range from quizzes to lectures to panels to book launches to performances, covering a very wide range of topics, texts, and writers. It's a great way to get to know some of the talented creatives around us, and those of us who share that creative bent can pick up a few tricks while we're at it.

Due to various health and scheduling difficulties in previous years, I'd been forced to sit out the festival and sigh longingly when the programme came out, but this year I finally had the time and energy to attend some events! Two of the workshops on offer particularly caught my eye, and since they were scheduled to take place on the same day in the same venue it was easy to attend them both (unlike some other workshops I liked the look of). I really enjoyed them, and learned some useful things. The best way to embed learning is to share it with someone else, and who better to share my new knowledge with than you, my lovely readers? It's not the same as being there, of course, but I hope you appreciate these gems as much as I do.