Events

Wednesday June 10 - Wednesday September 16, 5pm - 7.00 pm

Free monthly writers workshops by and for local writers.

June 10th – Elianna Gray

July 8th – Holly Ruth

August 19th – TBC

September 16th – TBC

Limited spaces: Please RSVP to librarian@dunedinathenaeum.org.nz

No experience necessary

Friday April 24, 5.30pm - 7.00 pm

Kia ora koutou,

Black Star’s zine collection has been relocated to the Athenaeum & Mechanics’ Institute in the Octagon, and we’ll be having a gathering event to celebrate it at 5.30PM.

There will be guests speakers who were involved with Black Star Books and some readings from some of the zines. Followed by refreshments.

All welcome!

Tuesday April 21, 5.30pm - 7.00 pm

The annual 24-hour Regent book sale, now in its 44th year, is one of Dunedin’s premier literary events. Come along, to show off and talk about what books of interest — any kind of interest — you acquired at this year’s Regent Theatre Book Sale.  (If you bought dozens or 100’s, you might just bring your top 10.)

This will be an informal and convivial occasion.

Bring your book-gathering friends!

Drinks and nibbles.  Admission by koha.

Please RSVP to books@otago.ac.nz, so we have some idea of numbers.

Tuesday November 25, 11am - 1pm

Dunedin UNESCO City of Literature and the Athenaeum & Mechanics Institute warmly invite you to join us in celebrating the unveiling of a plaque in the Dunedin Writers’ Walk in the Octagon in honour of Vincent O’Sullivan.

Tuesday 25 November
11am

Robbie Burns statue, followed by refreshments at the Athenaeum Library, 23 The Octagon

All welcome – please RSVP to librarian@dunedinathenaeum.org.nz

Wednesday November 19, 5.30pm - 7.00 pm

Join us to hear a taste of the exceptional work the inaugural Master of Creative Writing students have been doing this year.

All welcome, free to attend.

Featuring: Penny Bloomberg Janean Cherkun, Brenda Finlayson, Holly Ruth, Merrissa Foryani, Rhondda Greig, Mary McLaughlin, Grace Nottingham

Tuesday November 18, 4.30pm - 5.30pm

As part of the Bibliographical Society of Australia and New Zealand conference 2025, the Opening Keynote will be held at the Athenaeum & Mechanics Institute.

The 2025 Annual Conference is now open for registration. Details of the programme, conference dinner and other practicalities are also available, so have a good look around and start planning your visit.

A book is the product of multiple actors (author, agent, printer, editor, publisher), and once a book exists, its life beyond the printer depends on a whole series of additional actors (distributors, booksellers, purchasers, reviewers, prize committees, second-hand sellers, collectors, libraries).  This conference focuses on all of these processes, at different times and in different places.  Whether we regard these agents as part of a full circuit of connections or fortuitous players that may interact haphazardly, we should not conceive of the book as simply a unified container of ideas, though books often try to appear that way.  Papers that examine how any of these interactions impact on or account for the power of the book are welcome.  We especially welcome studies that examine points at which Darnton’s circuit is disrupted or rerouted in unexpected directions.  And ‘book’ encompasses all written communication: in manuscript, periodical or monograph form, physical or virtual.

Opening Keynote

4:30 pm at the Athenaeum and Mechanics’
Institute: 23, The Octagon

Chair: Donald Kerr
Maggie Patton
The Rollercoaster of Contemporary Collecting

Maggie Patton is the Head of Collection Acquisition & Curation at the State Library of New South Wales, managing the Library’s collection acquisition program and leading the curatorial team in activities that interpret and profile these invaluable collections. With over three decades of experience in the library sector, Maggie has led numerous creative initiatives, including exhibitions, public programs, and digital projects. Maggie’s collection expertise centres on rare books and historic cartography.

Tuesday October 28, 5.30pm - 7.00 pm

FREE

 

Friday August 22, 5pm - 8pm

The Otago Southland branch of the New Zealand Society of Authors, together with our Ōtepoti UNESCO City of Literature, invite you to an evening of poetry and music exploring our city’s history – natural, urban and otherwise.

Local poets will share new work that examines our Otago history as well as what this place means to us today, and how it is imagined into our future. The evening begins with a youth poetry event, with results from the 2025 NPD youth competition.  

The event also includes the launch of the locally created chapbook anthology A shell-print of waves: Aramoana poems, edited by David Eggleton and Michelle Elvy. 

Join a range of Otago talents, from Otago University’s MCW students to award-winning poets, including: Brenda Finlayson, Claire Beynon, Emma Neale, Holly Fletcher, Jackson, John Gibb, Michelle Elvy, Richard Reeve, Robert Sullivan, Sam Montgomerie, Sandie Forsyth & Nicola Thorstensen. And music to light up our night from Simon Eastwood, bass, & Motoko Kikkawa, violin. 

Friday, 22 August, 5pm – 8pm 

Koha entry 

The Athenaeum & Mechanics’ Institute, The Octagon 

5pm Youth Poetry reading and awards 

5.45 drinks and nibbles, poetry and music with Simon Eastwood, bass, & Motoko Kikkawa, violin 

Plus a raffle! Win a bundle of books worth $150 with your $5 raffle ticket. The book bundle is generously donated by Otago University Press.  

Contact: nzsaotagosouthland@gmail.com – for info and to purchase raffle tickets 

Thursday August 21, 4.30pm - 5.30pm

Come and Celebrate our Young Creative Writers on National Poetry Day!

Join OAR FM as we celebrate the next cohort of Layers of Identity, a creative writing and podcast project for Dunedin youth exploring their whakapapa, identity, and belonging.

Our talented Phase 2 contributors will share their poems and personal essays about their connections to Ōtepoti Dunedin and beyond.

We are excited that this project will be published into a book, with the generous support of Dunedin UNESCO City of Literature 📖

CELEBRATION EVENT

📅 Thursday 21 August 2025

⏰ 4:30 – 5:30 PM

📍 Dunedin Athenaeum & Mechanics’ Institute

FREE with light snacks provided!

📩 RSVP: youthzone@oar.org.nz

You can listen to podcasts of Phase 1 contributors on OAR FM, Spotify and Apple Podcasts!

This project is proudly supported by:

Dunedin City Council Arts Grant

Dunedin Athenaeum and Mechanics’ Institute

Dunedin Public Libraries

Dunedin UNESCO City of Literature

NZ on Air

Thursday May 8, 5.30pm - 7.00 pm

Friday December 13, 5.30pm - 8pm

Friday November 1, 6.00 pm - 7.30 pm

It’s the annual  Dunedin Zine festival and the Athenaeum Library are hosting a Zine Panel Discussion-

“NZ Punk and Zines”

Featuring: Always Never Fun, Daily Secretion, Landover Press, Kowhitikaru, Nerd Bird and

David Merrit.

All welcome. Free to attend.

Friday 1st November, 2024.

Doors at 5.30pm.

Friday August 2, 5.30 - 6.30

You are invited to a talk by the poet, environmentalist and biographer, Denys Trussell, concerning his recent book, Albatross Neck. This is a work both of prose and poetry, illustrated extensively by the Dunedin-based painter, Nigel Brown. The talk concerns the vital interaction between the arts and the environment. Why the title Albatross Neck? It refers to Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner, one of the earliest ecological poems in English. In it, the mariner, who shot the albatross, has the dead bird hung around his neck by his crew-mates to induce his guilt in needlessly killing a living being.

Trussell, a long-time author and ecological campaigner, helped establish, in 1975, Friends of the Earth in Aotearoa New Zealand. He still works for them. His ecological writings have been published in Britain, France, Germany, the USA and Aotearoa New Zealand.  While working in London he edited a definitive philosophical work, The Way, An Ecological World View by Edward Goldsmith, the activist who established The Ecologist magazine, still publishing in several  countries.

Trussell’s biography of the New Zealand poet, ARD Fairburn, won the PEN Best First Book of Prose in 1985; his fifth book of poems, Walking into the Millennium, was short-listed in the Montana Book Awards in 1999; his Collected Poems was published in 2019. Albatross Neck, his fifteenth book, discusses how the arts are a seedbed of ecological ideas and environmental activism.

There will be time for discussion of the material Denys presents. The book will be available for viewing at the talk.

Thursday July 4, 6pm - 8pm

Saturday October 14, 3.30pm - 5.30pm

The programmes for this wonderful event are available at the Athenaeum.

There is also one event being held at the Athenaeum.  On Saturday 14th October at 3.30pm.  $20/15.

Radiant Revelry – Celebrating Katherine Mansfield’s Timeless Legacy.

On her birthday, and to commemorate the centenary year of her death, we celebrate the life and work of Katherine Mansfield, New Zealand’s iconic, boundary-pushing literary giant.

Get ready for an afternoon of sensory delight, in the cosy heritage surroundings of the Athenaeum Library.  We will be transported back in time by a cello and violin duo performing the classical music that Mansfield loved.

We’ll then move to a fascinating and in-depth conversation between chair Michelle Elvy and Katherine Mansfield biographer Redmer Yska – author of Katerine Mansfield’s Europe: Station to Station.

To be followed by a gorgeous afternoon tea of inspired cupcakes by massive Mansfield fan, Dunedin cake artist Alby Hailes, at which the winners of the inaugural At the Bay I I te Kokoru story awards will be announced by Emma Neale.

Thursday October 5 - Sunday October 15, 9am - 5pm

As a part of the Otepoti Dunedin Heritage Festival the Athenaeum will be holding an open day on Saturday the 7th of October from 12 noon to 2pm.

Members are welcome to come in during that time to change their books.

Thursday September 21, 6pm - 7pm

For the second year the Athenaeum was the venue for the World Peace Day Readings.  We had a nice turn out to listen to readings from three authors.

Wednesday December 23 - Wednesday January 27, 5pm - 10am

The Athenaeum Library is closed from the 24th of December and reopens on Wednesday the 27th of January 2021

Sunday November 29, 3pm - 5pm

Birthday Cake & Bubbles

Celebrating the 150th anniversary of the Athenaeum Building with a series of Lightning Talks and birthday cake and bubbly.

Seats are limited so please RSVP to: librarian@dunedinathenaeum.org.nz

Followed by a Celebration Dinner

Drinks from 5.30pm for dinner at 6pm ‘Vault 21’, The Octagon

Ticketed Dinner: $45 (members), $59 (non-members) / Cash Bar

Purchase from the Librarian during opening hours

Sunday September 16, 2pm - 4pm

Dan Davin was born and grew up in Southland.  He attended Otago University and became a Rhodes Scholar to Oxford graduating just before the start of WWII.  He joined up immediately first with the Royal Warwickshire Regiment and then transferred to the NZ Division in 1940 where he saw action in Crete.  He then joined Military Intelligence, 8th Army HQ in Cairo.

You may have heard the recent reading on National Radio New Zealand of Dance of the Peacocks by James McNeish which included Davin as one of a notable group of Rhodes Scholars from between the wars.

A Field Officer’s Notebook is a collection of his poetry from this time which has been edited by Robert McLean.

We are very lucky to have Fiona Farrell, Vincent O’Sullivan, Robert McLean, Roger Hickin and Tony Eyre speaking about this charismatic writer who influenced many generations of New Zealanders through his open door policy towards travelling Kiwis as much as his writing.

Tuesday June 12 - Tuesday December 18, 12.10pm - 12.30pm

A series of Winter readings of Janet Frame’s autobiography To The Is-Land.  Held every Tuesday until we finish the trilogy.

Bring your lunch and discover the pleasure of being read one of New Zealand’s greatest writers.

This is a FREE EVENT open to Athenaeum members and non-members…