A fantastic Perth Writers Festival

Family Dynamics

I’m just coming down from the high of three days at the Perth Writers Festival, where I conducted a workshop on editing, talked about Family Dynamics with Peggy Frew, Myfanwy Jones and Michelle Michau Crawford, discussed Foreboding with Garry Disher and David Dyer, and then finished with the official book launch of All That is Lost Between Us.

I loved finding out more about the wonderful novels by my co-panellists, whose books I would all highly recommend. I also had quite an emotional moment listening to Liz Byrski launch my new novel, because Liz is an author I deeply admire. To have her say such wonderful things about not only this book but my previous stories was very, very special.

with Larissa Edwards and Liz Byrski

with Garry Disher and David Dyer

I made it to a few sessions myself. I watched Roman Kryznck open the festival with his engaging talk on empathy. I listened to Susan Johnstone, Helen Ellis and Lauren Groff discuss the Domestic novel, and it was great hearing them speak, although the session didn’t really go in the direction I hoped it would (I wanted them to get into the nitty gritty of how the domestic is written and perceived in fiction). I also attended the Stan Grant, Jane Caro and Lindsay Tanner session called ‘We Need to Talk About This’. They each spoke passionately about issues from racism to mental health, and left me wanting to read their work. And I watched Michael Cathcart interview Paolo Bacigalupi, where he raised the interesting point of whether descriptions of sexual violence in novels can ever go too far. I found myself agreeing with Michael, because I think I stopped reading a lot of crime (I used to read loads) due to the graphic descriptions of horrible events in many of the novels. But … how can we ever censor stories? Because if we did, the same reasoning might be applied to some of the awful scenes in Shallow Breath, but they form an integral part of the novel. They have to be there, even though I found them very distressing to write. This is complex question, and while Paolo Bacigalupi certainly did his best to answer it, I didn’t feel he nailed it.

with Anna O’Grady, awesome lady, avid reader and brilliant publicist

A personal highlight of the festival was spending the evening of my 40th birthday with the Simon & Schuster authors and publishing team, along with a few passionate booksellers and journalists. The beautiful, inclusive nature of the event left me in no doubt that Simon & Schuster Australia is a very special publishing house, and I feel extremely blessed to be under their wing.

If you attended the festival, I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. And if you came to one of my sessions, thank you. Roll on PWF 2017!col-md-2