Plans for the 2007 Auckland Writers & Readers Festival are well underway and with an extra day of programming, more international and local guests expected than ever before, and increased seating capacity at the festival's new venue, the future looks bright for lovers of good writing and innovative thinking.

The festival has enjoyed a steady growth rate since its debut on the Auckland arts scene in 1999. Audience numbers in 2005 increased by a staggering thirty percent on the previous festival, more than doubling the audience at the inaugural festival in 1999.

From 2007, the Auckland Writers & Readers Festival will become an annual event, expanding to four stimulating days of readings, panel discussions, poetry events, workshops and one-on-one interviews. Taking over the entire Aotea Centre from morning to night, the festival kicks off on Thursday 24 May with around 20 international writers and 100 local writers and commentators participating in more than 60 individual sessions. While the overall theme for the 2007 festival is 'A Life's Work', with a focus on biography, autobiography, memoir and fascinating life stories - local writers and commentators from a range of genres, both fiction and non-fiction, will take the stage alongside international guests.

The first group of international writers confirmed for 2007 include:

• Philip Ardagh - Described by The Guardian as a cross between Charles Dickens and Monty Python, this Irish writer has written over sixty books, including the best-selling Eddie Dickens trilogy for children. 
• Richard Ford - Acclaimed author of Independence Day, for which he won the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. The third book in the Frank Bascombe trilogy, The Lay of the Land, has just been released in New Zealand to ecstatic reviews. 
• Kate Grenville - The Australian author who won the Orange Prize in 2001 for The Idea of Perfection. Her latest novel, The Secret River, won the 2006 Commonwealth Writers Prize, Book of the Year at the Australian Book Industry Awards and was short-listed for the 2006 Man Booker Prize.
• Pico Iyer - A regular contributor to Time Magazine, The New York Review of Books, Harper's, the Financial Times, National Geographic, Conde Nast, Traveler and the website Salon, Iyer is equally well-loved for his idiosyncratic tales of far-off lands, such as Video Night in Kathmandu and The Lady and the Monk. Born in England, Iyer grew up in California and currently lives in Japan. His latest collection of travel writing is Sun After Dark.
• Carrie Tiffany - Carrie Tiffany spent her early twenties working as a park ranger in Australia's red centre and now lives in Melbourne where she works as an agricultural journalist. Her debut novel, the remarkable Everyman's Rules for Scientific Living, was short-listed in 2006 for the Miles Franklin Literary Award and the Orange Prize for Fiction, and won the 2006 Western Australian Premier's Award for Fiction. 
• Don Winslow - An American crime writer who has smuggled money in South Africa, sold safari tours in China, simulated hostage exchanges while working as a 'mock terrorist' for the Institute for International Studies, and worked as a private investigator. Winslow now works as an independent consultant on issues involving litigation arising from criminal behaviour. His books include The Death and Life of Bobby Z, California Fire and Life, The Power of the Dog and a new novel, The Winter of Frankie Machine, which will be published in New Zealand in March 2007. Ian Rankin comments: "so good you almost want to keep him to yourself". 
• Tim Winton - The somewhat elusive and much-loved Western Australian writer Tim Winton has won the Miles Franklin Award three times, for Shallows, Cloudstreet and, most recently, Dirt Music. The latter was also short-listed along with The Riders for the Booker Prize. Winton's latest work is the significant and groundbreaking short story collection aka novel, The Turning.

More international and local guests will be announced in February 2007, and the final programme will be launched on line at www.writersfestival.co.nz from 29 March 2007. Public bookings open on Thursday 5 April at Ticketek.