Damien Wilkins is the author of seven novels, including The Miserables, The Fainter and Max Gate. Wilkins has had books published in New Zealand, the United States and the United Kingdom, and has won and been nominated for a range of prizes and awards. He has also published poems, stories, and written for television and the stage. Under the band name The Close Readers, he has released three albums of his original songs. He lives in Wellington, where he is the director of the International Institute of Modern Letters at Victoria University. Wilkins appears at Wordfest with support from the Creative New Zealand & New Zealand Book Council.

Max Gate

It’s 1928 and the world’s most famous novelist, Thomas Hardy, is dying in the upstairs room of Max Gate, the house he built in his beloved Dorset. Downstairs, his high-powered literary friends are becoming locked in a bitter fight with local supporters. Who owns Hardy’s remains? Who knew the great man best? What are the secrets of Max Gate? Nellie Titterington, a maid at the house, narrates this earthy and emotionally argued novel about  a world of ambition, duty, belonging and love.