The Writers' Week was held in the Pioneer Women's Memorial Gardens which was a beautiful location. There were two large stages that ran simultaneously, the theme of the week was Being Human. The whole festival is free and the crowds were huge.
I missed most of it, but my first full day in Adelaide was the last day of the festival. So after a morning walk in the city I made my way to the gardens.
I saw Margaret Simons talking about her book on Penny Wong. It was originally not approved of by Penny, but she slowly pursued her and Penny finally turned around and gave her a couple of short interviews. Penny is as amazing and formidable as you can imagine and hope.
After lunch I caught the end of Mohammed Massoud Morsi's talk. Mohammed is an Egyptian Journalist and spoke about writing about conflict, politics, his country, and so forth. Fascinating and scary and important, I was quite taken by it all.
I moved straight to a wonderful chat with Michael Robotham and Felicity McLean. I haven't read anything by Robotham, not my genre, but I have heard him talk before and he is charismatic and interesting. I have Felicity's book, The Van Apfel Girls are Gone, on my to read list. They each talked about their processes and books. They both started as ghost writers for mostly "autobiographies" and felt it gave them great training for capturing character and finding their voice.
Felicity's story was fascinating. She is a journalist and was a ghost writer and a few years back was on a panel at SWF and was asked to read something she had written. She couldn't read anything she had written, being a ghost writer, but had an idea she was tossing around. She made up something on the spot and felt relieved she had gotten away with it...until the Q and A, and Bryan Brown was in the front row and asked her more about the book. She had to fess up and he challenged her to write it, and a few years later it was an instant best seller. She wanted to do a community mystery in the vein of Picnic at Hanging Rock. She wrote it over 2 years during 5am and 7am every day. I can't wait to read it.
The final session of the day was Vicki Laveau-Harvie talking about her remarkable memoir, The Erratics. I recently read it and was blown away. It is about her estranged parents, and the period when she was called back to help out when her elderly mother was admitted to hospital after a fall. It weaves around time to tell the story of why Vicki and her sister were both estranged from her parents, her mother's mental health, and the possibility she was slowly killing their father. A tale of dreadful parenting and tenacity and survival. Written with beauty and honesty and humour, no wonder it has won so many awards.
Listening to Vicki talk, was an absolute joy. She is a born storyteller, intelligent, eloquent, vivacious, and funny. She told stories behind the story, fleshed out sections that were not in the memoir, and explained how those written about reacted to the book. If you ever get the chance to be in her company, do not refuse, and go and read the book.
The next day I headed to the festival centre building, which is a huge complex opposite the gardens. It has theatres, galleries, and a large restaurant and cafe within it. Every day during the festival David Marr was doing an hour talk with someone involved in the festival. I got there early and had a wander about before grabbing a hot chocolate and then finding a good seat. I was lucky I got a seat in the third row and the place filled, like standing room only full!
The person we were waiting to see, was a famous English stage actress who was out here in a play for the festival. Juliet Stevenson is also a movie and television actress, and the star of one of my all-time favourite fims, Truly, Madly, Deeply. I was beside myself to be in her presence. I have seen her in many other films and recently loved her in S2 of Riviera. She was also in Emma, Mona Lisa Smile, Being Julia, Bend it like Beckham and many more.
Juliet was gracious and lovely and honest and open and gave us everything which was wonderful. David, it goes without saying, was a wonderful interviews and they had a lovely chemistry. She was very down to earth but had this charismatic feel that only the big stars, I imagine, have. Her intelligence was fierce and her stories fascinating. She spoke about politics and feminism and racism and ethics which were among many of the themes within her play, The Doctor. It sounded quite fascinating, I wish I would have had the chance to see it.
They had a Q and A at the end and I so desperately wanted to ask her what it was like to act opposite the late, great Alan Rickman and was the Musical scene as much fun to shoot as it looked. But I didn't, she was here to talk about her play. But I just felt so happy to be in her presence, it really didn't matter.
After the session ended I went and had a look at the photography display in the centre. It was called the 150 Psalms Exhibition and featured 150 extraordinary photographs from the archive of The Australian matched with a Psalm.
There was also a lot of wonderful art exhibited around the corridors of the building.
I had a late lunch in their cafe before heading off for Day 1 of Womad.
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