One Hundred and Fifty Five Years in the Octagon!

To mark this milestone, they will be having an array of exciting happenings - beginning with an event in the library:

• Archivist Tom Riley from Dunedin's Hocken Library, will be giving a talk about the history of the Octagon and the Athenaeum Library and Mechanics Institute, during those early years.
• There will be readings from award winning authors Laurence Fearnley and Fiona Farrell.
• Hear excerpts from Fearnley's 2025 Ockham shortlisted book ‘At the Grand Glacier Hotel’. Followed by readings of their vintage Mills & Boons collection.
• Stories will be shared from this mysterious library- presented by some of the members and exhibited on the walls.

Free to attend.

Please RSVP by Wednesday 7th May for catering purposes.
librarian@dunedinathenaeum.org.nz

Laurence Fearnley is an award-winning novelist. Her novel The Hut Builder won the fiction category of the 2011 NZ Post Book Awards. In 2014 her novel Reach was longlisted for the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards, and, in 2008, Edwin and Matilda was runner-up in the fiction category of the Montana New Zealand Book Awards. Her second novel, Room, was shortlisted for the 2001 Montana New Zealand Book Awards. In 2004 Fearnley was awarded the Artists to Antarctica Fellowship and in 2007 the Robert Burns Fellowship at the University of Otago. In 2016 she won the NZSA/ Janet Frame Memorial Award and in 2017 she was the joint winner of the Landfall essay competition. She was named a New Zealand Arts Foundation Laureate in 2019. Her book 'At the Grand Glacier Hotel' has been shortlisted for the 2025 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards.

Fiona Farrell lives in Ōtepoti Dunedin, She has published poetry, plays, fiction and non-fiction. She has received numerous awards, including the New Zealand Book Award, the Menton Fellowship, the Prime Minister's Award for Fiction and the ONZM for Services to Literature.