Exciting learning opportunities, open to everyone

#2613 Finding The Voices We Rarely Hear

Speaker Adrienne Jansen

Date Saturday 27th June 2026  10am-1pm

Venue Waikanae Presbyterian Church Hall, 43 Ngaio Road, Waikanae

Adrienne Jansen is a writer of fiction, non-fiction and poetry. With a background in both writing and teaching, she founded both the Porirua Language Project, and the Whitireia Polytechnic Creative Writing Programme. She has had a long involvement with the teaching of English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL), and much of her writing has focussed on the migrant experience in Aotearoa New Zealand. She has written alongside migrants, enabling them to tell their own story, and resulting in books of interviews with taxi drivers, women, Asian Muslims, among others. More recently, she has been the lead publisher at Landing Press, a small not-for-profit publisher that publishes anthologies of poetry that many people can enjoy, with a social justice edge. Their vision is to include voices rarely heard in the New Zealand literary landscape, alongside poets we all recognise. For more information see: www.adriennejansen.co.nz

Adrienne will talk about some larger projects she has worked on – travelling through New Zealand with photographer Ans Westra, interviewing Asian Muslims, or the difficulties of finding women drivers willing to take part in a project on migrant taxi drivers. She will also talk about finding the unheard voices for Landing Press anthologies – meeting with cleaners on the railway station, or in an office late at night, or writing for a year with men in Wellington City Mission’s transitional housing or joining people queueing for free food. And how by writing with them, they find their own voice, and sometimes it’s transformational.