How does this happen? Confessions of a book lover.
4 Comments »27th February, 2010; Category: Adelaide Writers' Week, Books, Events, Novels, Reading, Writers
The biennial Adelaide Festival of Arts starts today. This feast of cultural events is now a well established event in South Australia, celebrating 50 years of festivals this year. It has maintained a world class standard for festivals since its inception. This week there have been political promises to make it an annual event – we have a state election here in 3 weeks’ time.
Writers’ Week
A very prominent and popular part of the Adelaide Festival of Arts is Writers’ Week, starting tomorrow. Several dozen leading Australian and International writers descend on Adelaide for this festival. Several large marquees are set up in the beautiful parklands and the writers are given centre stage for a whole week. Most sessions are free events for the reading and writing public, a rare thing these days. Book launches are also a prominent feature of the week, along with the announcement of a raft of awards.
Programme Guide
I plan to attend a number of sessions next week so during the week I wandered into a leading bookshop in Adelaide to buy the programme guide. The price was $7 and I thought that wouldn’t break the bank or drain the wallet too much.
How come then I come out of the bookshop with six books in a bag?
Those wonderful novels – some in hardback – were sitting there on the bargain tables quietly whispering my name and begging to be taken to a good home. I couldn’t resist.
As part of this confession, and to atone for my misdeeds, I’ll read those books over coming weeks and then review them here on this blog. It’s the least I can do.
Good reading.
Good writing.
To read more about my impressions of the Adelaide Writers’ Week click here.
Australia Day 2010 honours our writers
Laughing Kookaburra
January 26th is Australia Day, a special day celebrating the first landing of European settlers in Sydney Cove, 1788.
The day is celebrated in many ways: family gatherings, picnics, barbecues, going to the beach, attending sporting events or just having a lazy day in the middle of the Australian summer.
Every year for the last few years Australia Post has celebrated the event by issuing a special set of postage stamps called Australian Legends. This series of stamps features people who have made a major contribution to Australian life and culture.
This year the stamps are called Australian Legends of the written word. They highlight the works of six of our most prominent writers. The writers honoured in this way are Peter Carey, David Malouf, Colleen McCullough, Bryce Courtenay, Thomas Keneally and Tim Winton.
I think it is wonderful that our leading novelists have been honoured in this way. Writers in Australia are often overlooked for the massive contribution they have made to our culture. Each of the writers featured are truly deserving of the honour.
Where are they?
Of course, by featuring these six writers, many other well deserved writers have been overlooked. In the field of novelists another 15 to 20 worthy recipients could have been listed, including Nobel Prize winner J.M. Coetzee. Admittedly, he was born in South Africa but now resides here in my home state of South Australia. Bryce Courtenay was also born in South Africa, so here is an inconsistency in the choice of recipients. And what of Patrick White, Helen Garner, Kate Grenville, Peter Goldsworthy, Robert Dessaix and Elizabeth Jolley? The list could go on and on. Then you have the great writers who are no longer contemporary, such as Henry Lawson and Banjo Paterson.
My major gripe however is that no poets or children’s authors are represented. Judith Wright, Les Murray, Bruce Dawe and Gwen Harwood have all had significant influences in the field of poetry. That’s just four I could name from dozens of worthy recipents.
Australian children’s authors lead the world in their field. Writers like Colin Thiele, Mem Fox, Sonya Harnett, Ivan Southall and dozens more have had or continue to have a significant impact on young readers around the world.
I guess that Australia Post had a difficult job narrowing the choice down to just six writers, but a little balance in the final six would have been nice.
Links:
- Australian Legends of the written word
- Peter Carey
- David Malouf
- Colleen McCullough
- Bryce Courtenay
- Thomas Keneally
- Tim Winton
Happy birthday to me
IT’S MY BIRTHDAY TODAY.
(Blushes as he hears all the wild cheering.)
I haven’t posted here for quite a few days. I’ve been busy putting the finishing touches to my MA novel and the accompanying essay. My novel is now in its 6th draft and will soon see its 7th and 8th drafts. More on that another day. My 10,000 word exegesis essay is lingering around the 2,000 word mark and desperately needs my attention. Tomorrow.
For my birthday I treated myself by buying 2 new novels: “The Turning” by Tim Winton and “The Slap” by Christos Tsiolkas. I’ll review them here when I’ve finished reading them in a few weeks’ time.
Good writing.
Why I’m not participating in NaNoWriMo
I think that the National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) is a great idea, but I won’t be participating this time around.
It’s just that I simply do not have the time to do it this year. Nor did I have time to do it last year. I’m in the last stages of completing my Master of Arts in Creative Writing and only have this month to get everything finished and submitted. I finished the course work earlier in the year. Now I’m working on my thesis paper, a 40,000 word novel for children. My novel writing month was spread over about six weeks in August and September. That’s when the pressure was on for me.
Now I’m busy with rewriting, editing, revising and proofreading. It’s a tedious job but one that must be attended to with meticulous care if I want to stand a chance of being awarded my degree. After that I will be submitting the manuscript to publishers so it will be time well spent.
The NaNoWriMo concept is a good one. It’s main strength as I see it is to motivate people to get the novel they’ve been wanting to write for so many years and actually do something other than talk about it. Then there’s the incentive of having hundreds of other people doing the same thing around the globe at the same time which results in a certain momentum being built up. It’s like being caught in the surge of a crowd of people, or catching a great surfing wave. It just carries you along and builds an energy from within.
If you are participating – good writing.
May you eventually recover from the inevitable lack of sleep.
For more information about NaNoWriMo click here.