Emily Bitto whose The Strays won this year’s Stella Prize, Joan London, Kate Greville and Chigozie Obioma are among the headline writers appearing at the 2015 Byron Bay Writers Festival which is running 7-9 August. The program for the festival, which is held on a beautiful site just a stone’s throw from the ocean…
Jeanette Winterson to be keynote speaker at Byron Bay Writers’ Festival
Jeanette Winterson has been confirmed as keynote speaker at the Byron Bay Writers’ Festival 2014 which is held annually in the beautiful beachside setting in northern New South Wales, Australia. The full list of speakers is yet to be announced for the festival which runs from 1-3rd of August. Winterson, famous…
Happy new book year, looking forward to 2014
Happy New Year. I am not a great one for making New Year resolutions, maybe I just don’t have the imagination for setting grand, life-changing targets and I certainly don’t have the fortitude for using an arbitrary deadline to, say, begin the diet I should undertake, or cease imbibing alcohol when I know there’s too many days of holiday living to make do with soda water.
Book-related resolutions are, however, a bit easier. In 2014 I am going to stick with 2013 plan to log every book I read during the year. Not only was it invaluable in doing the end-of-year round-up of my Top Ten books of the year but it is also a wonderful reminder of some of the gems (and not so gem-like) during the year. It always seems ridiculous how
Review: Mr Wigg by Inga Simpson
One of the great joys of being an avid reader is the serendipitous discovery of a little gem, a book you probably would normally have never found and read if you hadn’t gone to that book festival, or popped into that bookshop, or sat opposite that person on the train.
I had not heard of Mr Wigg by Inga Simpson before I attended the recent Byron Bay Writers Festival on the lovely New South Wales coast in Australia. It’s probably not surprising as she was part of a panel discussion called Bursting on the Page: fabulous first fiction.
I wouldn’t put Mr Wigg in the same category as Burial Rites (Hannah Kent’s powerful first novel) or We Need New Names by NoViolet Bulawayo, which is long-listed for the Booker Prize, but I loved its gentleness and its enchanting whimsical riff.
Women & Power: Byron Bay Literary Festival
Misogyny and equality were the two words of the weekend at the Byron Bay Writers’ Festival on Australia’s east coast, dominating not only the discussion at a number of formal panels but also in the less formal conversations as people enjoyed the spectacular weather and location. Although the Festival schedule…