Dunedin as a Writers' City
Dunedin has countless literary associations. Many of New Zealand’s leading literary figures have lived in Dunedin for some part of their lives, and Dunedin has found a place in their various writings.
Much of Dunedin’s literary life has been centred on the University of Otago. The list of holders of the annual Burns Fellowship (founded in 1959) offers a roll-call of New Zealand’s most notable authors.
This trail offers a comprehensive tour of places of literary interest, the places where well known (and less well known) writers lived, worked, wrote, loved, drank, and were buried.
See the Fortune Theatre, where the premières of several Roger Hall plays have been staged; the Captain Cook and Bowling Green pubs, which feature in the pages of several now-famous student poets; the one-time homes of Maurice Shadbolt in Union Street, James K. Baxter in Cumberland Street, Cilla McQueen in Grange Street; Otago Boys High School, alma mater of Alistair Campbell and Graham Billing; the Northern Cemetery, where Thomas Bracken is buried; and many, many more.
The trail starts and finishes in the Octagon and can be followed on foot; allow two or three hours to follow it in detail. You will need a car for the extensions to Brighton along the coast and to Port Chalmers on the north side of the harbour.
The guide, which is an absolute mine of information, was written by G.J. Griffiths on the occasion of New Zealand Writers’ Week in Dunedin in 1989. It is, inevitably, out-of-date in a few minor details.