Cartoonist Alison Bechdel and celebrated literary scholar Terry Castle are proving a hot ticket in the Writers Week section of Wellington's New Zealand Festival. The pair will travel to the capital for the event, and a joint appearance at St Peters Hall in Paekakariki on 8 March has already sold out. Bechdel will lead an hour-long discussion of her work on the next day at Embassy Theatre, and tickets go on sale to the public on 7 February. However they can be bought now by becoming a 'Friend of the Festival'. Castle is hosting a high tea where she will explore the work of Jane Austen on 10 March, which has also already sold out. Bechdel is known for the comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For and has also created two acclaimed memoirs Fun Home and Are You My Mother? Gender and sexual identity are a large part of the core message of her work. Castle writes on topics ranging from 18th-century ghost stories to World War I era lesbianism and among her works are the anthology The Literature of Lesbianism, which won the Lambda Literary Editor's Choice Award. We'll have more on the other glbti delights at the New Zealand Festival soon.
Credit: GayNZ.com Daily News staff
First published: Saturday, 1st February 2014 - 8:17am