Verb Readers & Writers Festival returns to the capital running September 23rd - 27th. This year's programme features an exceptional lineup of local and international authors, with the first two artists announced – Chris Tse & Jon Toogood.

The full festival programme will be announced Friday 14 August.

Chris Tse is back with his fourth poetry collection, Dance-Floor Romance. Unfolding in the strobe-lit landscape of the club, this latest collection from Tse reflects on joy, nostalgia and legacy – and what it means to make a vocation of vulnerability. But when the lights come up after the last dance, how do we brace ourselves to face the world outside? Dance-Floor Romance is poetry that seeks answers from the art we turn to in times of uncertainty, that ‘Holds the present as much as it / holds a whisper of the future’, and amplifies it.

Events with Chris Tse will be announced on Friday 14 August.

CHRIS TSE

In this special event chaired by Nick Bollinger, legendary frontman of Shihad and The Adults, Jon Toogood, pulls back the curtain on a 37-year career that helped define New Zealand rock, and the personal cost that came with it. From a music-obsessed childhood in Wellington to the roar of international stages, this is a life driven by sound. Weaving powerful conversation with solo performances of his songs, Jon revisits the moments that shaped him, taking the audience on a VIP tour through a life of music, sharing untold stories, songwriting secrets, and the candid truths about mental health.

Tickets on sale here.

JON TOOGOOD

Verb Readers & Writers Festival 2026