Become a Friend of
Featherston Booktown
Let’s Be Friends
Become a Friend of Featherston Booktown and help fund the Festival, and our Children’s Book Voucher Project. Help us promote literacy and inspire imaginations with your annual membership donation.
$100 Family/Individual • $200 Business
If you’d like to donate more, we’d love that. Just enter the amount you’d like to donate when you register.
You’ll fund the Children’s Book Voucher Project
This gets us right to the heart of the matter. When you become a Friend of Featherston Booktown, your tax-deductible membership donation will directly fund The Children’s Book Voucher Project. A $100 membership buys five book vouchers for children, and a $200 membership buys ten book vouchers.
Each year during the Featherston Booktown Karukatea Festival we give out 1,500 book vouchers to all of the primary-aged school children in South Wairarapa. Children can redeem their $20 vouchers at Featherston, Martinborough, and Greytown bookshops, and at the booksellers’ stalls in Featherston during the Festival. For some children this is the first time they’ve had their own “money” to spend. Often, it’s the first time they can choose a book that they really like and want to read.
You’ll fund the Festival
You make the Festival happen. After the Children’s Book Voucher Project is funded, your membership donations help us secure popular writers, illustrators, and workshops for the Festival.
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Benefits for you
To say thanks for being a great Friend, you’ll also receive:
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Official recognition on our website
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An invitation to future Programme Launch Parties
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Earlybird access to event tickets
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A chance to meet Festival presenters
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A monthly Featherston Booktown Newsletter
Your membership donation is good for one year from 1 January through to 31 December. We won’t pester you to commit to more than one year at a time; we appreciate that personal circumstances change year to year.
The Friends of Featherston Booktown are a lively group of supporters who underpin our efforts and who are the driving force to help make Featherston Booktown one of New Zealand’s most valuable cultural events. Join us!
Hilary Beaton, Friend of Featherston Booktown
"In Becca Rothfeld’s thoughtful article The Death of the Book World (The New Yorker, Feb 2026), she compares the selection and reading of books and book reviews to algorithms. Book World was a regular column in The Washington Post.
She says, 'A consumer is a person whose pre-existing tastes you strive to satisfy over and over; a reader is someone you hope to change, convince, and surprise.' Of Amazon, she says, 'Every book the site’s algorithm recommends is similar to the one that you have purchased already. In this way, you encounter nothing but iterations of yourself.'
I remember the first adult book I ever read, The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, which profoundly changed the way I looked at the world. Books continue to do this for me. As Becca says, 'But if you didn’t want to be proved wrong, if you didn’t want to be altered or antagonized in ways that you could never predict, why would you read at all?'
I have no doubt that a Featherston Booktown Book Voucher will change, convince, and surprise the many recipients of this very generous project. It's a pleasure to be part of this initiative."
Friends of Featherston Booktown 2026
Individual and Whānau Friends
Anastacia Kirk
Ann & Andy Foster
Cath de Groot
Craig Linkhorn
Dave & Karina Te Hira
Donald Family
Emily Greenberg & Katie Beattie
Gillian & Tony Cross
Helen & John Meehan
J C Cormack
Jenny Morel & Alan Bollard
Judy Matthews
Kate & Jim Clark
Laureen Jones
Lucy McCahon
ML Wevers
Marcia Page
Martin & Tania Connelly
Owls of Featherston Wl
Pete Roberts
Richard Norman
Sally Angus
Sarah Connor
Sharleen Forbes /StatEd books
Shirley Vollweiler
Vivienne Morrell
Ankie Hoogvelt
Carole Bourdet
Celia Wade-Brown
Daphne Geisler
Diana Watson
EA & HV Kunz (Underhill Cottage)
Genevieve Cornelius
Grace & Stephen King
Hilary Beaton & David Carswell
Jackie Maher
Joy Gray
Julie Engebretson & Robin Simpson
Kim Workman
Liz Mellish
Lucy Riddiford
ML Wevers
Maria Wallace
Michelle Hawkins
P A & J M Stuart
Rachel Clarke
Robyn Hambleton
Sarah & Chris Uruski
Scilla Askew & Robert Carew
Sharon Garrett
Sue Sheriff
William Pitt
Business Friends of Featherston Booktown 2026
Major Funders 2026
Key Partners 2026
Friends of Featherston Booktown come in all shapes and sizes. They’re keen on things from rugby to cooking and roller derby to ballet, and range from home-makers to dog-walkers, cafe waiters to road workers, lawyers to public servants and everything in between. They come together to support Featherston Booktown to be part of something larger than themselves, contributing to the local community and engaging young people in something positive.
Featherston Booktown’s driving purpose is to position Featherston, the first town over the Remutaka Hill in the Wairarapa, as a world-famous, prosperous and innovative destination for lovers of books and literature. Encouraging children and adults alike to not just open a book, but to love reading or be inspired to put pen to paper and write; to provoke creativity and broaden minds to drive fulfilment and happiness.
Each year we host the Featherston Booktown Karukatea Festival weekend in May. We also stage many events throughout the year, gathering together our nation’s most acclaimed writers and thinkers spanning many genres to share their experiences and engage young and old.
"I took four of my grandchildren to Chicken and Frog to choose a book each for their Christmas present. A great time was had by all.
The gift of books is something special. Thank you for the opportunity to give book vouchers to children.”
- Sue W.