The Writers' Festival

Johnson gets so much so right . . . Along with Charlotte Grimshaw, Johnson is one of the best anatomisersof 21st-century Auckland . . . She's also a joyous advocate for writing and reading. You have to like that. . . It's a substantial book, emotionally as well as physically. Love hurts. The author excoriates yet sympathises with her cast. . . Does the book succeed? Oh, yes.

David Hill, NZ Listener

A couple of years ago, Stephanie Johnson wrote a highly entertaining novel about a writing class at an Auckland tertiary institution. It featured a wide cast of characters, some trenchant satire, a good deal of humanity and carried just a whiff of roman a clef. Her latest, The Writers' Festival, is the sequel (although it stands alone perfectly well). It features many of the same characters, a few new ones, even more trenchant and mischievous satire and the same sense that the author - herself the longserving (not to say suffering) director of the Auckland Writers' Festival - has created for herself the opportunity for some much-needed catharsis. . . Only a writer of Johnson's ability could keep so many narrative balls in the air with such deceptive ease. She once described the writing of fiction (when it is going well) as a form of legal hallucination, and her prose these days has that quality - the characters and reality she creates are completely believable despite the aura of farce flickering at the margins. . . She is just as generous to her peers in New Zealand letters here as she was in The Writing Class . . . There are some hilarious episodes. . . But there is also much poignancy. . . The uneasy nexus of art and commerce is always there . . . And although Johnson lives and breathes books, she is no mere sentimentalist: the place and importance of writers and writing in the digital world and in the brutal world we inhabit provide the ballast to all that entertaining sail.

John McCrystal, Weekend Herald

With new characters rubbing shoulders with those from The Writing Class, The Writer’s Festival is a fun read; one that made me go back and re-read The Writing Class because I wanted to, not because I needed to.

Sarah McMullan, Booksellers New Zealand's blog

It is a self-referential and celebratory novel – and bounded by the plight of a dissident Chinese writer, a device which nicely puts the chaotic hotbed of free literary emotions into perspective. A great read.

alysontheblog, https://alysontheblog.wordpress.com/

The festival reminds me of Ben Jonson’s great play Bartholomew Fair in which many strands are woven into the plot, where the swirl of activity represents social disorder. . . she has become increasingly sharp-eyed in observing fashions and increasingly assured in her technique. If she were not hidden in the Antipodes she would be mentioned along with Malcolm Bradbury, Thomas Sharpe or David Lodge as amusing, witty, satiric, yet a good read. . . Her books are clever, enjoyable mirrors of our time.

Bruce King, Journal of Postcolonial Writing

The inimitable Johnson follows up her superbly witty The Writing Class with this very entertaining sequel exploring territory she knows so well, as former director of the Auckland Writers' Festival. . . . Johnson appoints Rae McKay as her fictional AWF director and puts plenty of obstacles in her way: egos, politics, conficts of interest and corporate team-building bollocks. While farce is never too far away, it's also a generous, poignant triumph.

Linda Herrick, Weekend Herald