END TIMES: THE QUESTION OF HOPE
Rebecca Priestley
Rebecca Priestley discusses her new book, End Times, which is part memoir/part road trip exploring climate science, climate denial and belief systems. Chaired by Jude Watson.
What do the Christian right, natural health practitioners and farmers have in common? Rebecca Priestley examines this question and more in End Times, a work of creative nonfiction that interweaves two stories. In one, Priestley explores two of her teenage years, when in the late 1980s she and her best friend Maz became born-again Christians. Evangelists were preaching about the end times, convinced that the Pope was the Antichrist and the EFT-POS cards were the beginning of the 666 system.
This often dramatic experience is countered with a contemporary journey – a 2021 road trip with the same friend – to the West Coast, a part of New Zealand where the then mayor was a climate change denier, locals distrusted the Covid-19 vaccine, there were looming threats of both sea level rise and a statistically overdue massive earthquake, and conspiracy theories abounded. In the book, Priestley interrogates fake news, disinformation, conspiracy theories, science and why people believe what they believe.
All pukapuka will be for sale through our Festival bookstore Paper Plus Nelson, both at their shop and at their stall at Pukapuka Talks sessions – your opportunity to meet authors and get your books signed! You can also purchase books from Paper Plus online.
Rebecca Priestley
Rebecca Priestley is professor of Science in Society at Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington. She was science columnist for the NZ Listener for six years and is the author or editor of six previous books, including the critically acclaimed Fifteen Million Years in Antarctica (2019). She is a winner of the Royal Society of New Zealand Science Book Prize (2009) and the Prime Minister’s Science Communication Prize (2016). In 2018 she was made a Companion of the Royal Society Te Apārangi. She has an undergraduate degree in geology, a PhD in the history of science and an MA in Creative Writing from the International Institute of Modern Letters. Her book End Times is published in 2023.
Jude Watson (Chair)
Originally an English and History secondary school teacher, Jude Watson changed paths to do the New Zealand Publishing Diploma in 2010 and hasn’t looked back. An avid reader, wishful writer and now freelance editor, she has worked predominantly for Potton & Burton Publishers over the last eight years, but also contracts to Gecko Press, Massey University Press, HarperCollins, Te Papa Press, Batemans and several magazines and other publications.
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SUTER THEATRE
Sat 21 Oct | 1.30pm | 60 min
Pay What You Can (PWYC)
All Ages
Content warnings apply: Drug references