Sydney Writer's Festival

I spent four days last week at the Sydney Writer's Festival, attending 10 talks. Friends came and went, we ate and chatted and immersed ourselves in books.

I have a huge stack of books added to the to be read list.

I learnt a bit about writing too, which I will put to use if I ever sit down and write another story...ahhh. Not sure why I'm so rusty on this.

I just let friends pick the talks we went to so there were lots of new authors (to me), which was a great way to broaden reading.

There were two highlights that really brought me great joy:

The first, there was a street library there. I took 9 books out of my street library that had been sitting there for awhile and all but one went by the time I left for the weekend.

Secondly, I'd discovered Josh Silver was doing a free talk at our library but it clashed with one of the paid talks I was booked into. Low and behold he turned up at a YA talk we were attending (none of us knew why we'd picked that talk - I thought it was about spies so I was way off! HA!). I was so pleased that it worked out and he did not disappoint. As an aside, I LOVE authors that continue to do the free talks at libraries - especially as a YA author, as a lot of teens have limited access to funds. Review of HappyHead is here. (Liane Moriaty still does free talks at local libraries, which with all that Hollywood money is a real generosity. She's doing it for her readers and to support libraries, rather than for booksales). 

They handed out free copies of the Neal Shusterman series, which I gave to my friend's daughter. My eldest was a huge fan of the Unwind trilogy, so it was nice to share the author with another young person.

Did you go to the Writers Festival? Which talk was your favourite?

Or any auther talk you've been to that hit home for you in a special way?

 

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Sydney Comedy Festival

Sadly the Comedy Festival wraps up this week for another year. I have one last show on Sunday and unfortunately I think I have to give away my tickets to the 2 shows I was going tomorrow as a friend is coming to stay after surgery. Still got my fingers crossed her operation gets bumped (selfishly).

My friend and I repeated the fancy dinner at 20 Chapel before one of the Factory shows so I guess that's now our tradition to celebrate our festival run.

We went to Alright Hey's show at random, having no idea who he was. It was a sold out show full of huge fans and us. I had never even heard of him. He's talking about being flown first class to interview the Wicked leads in London, so obviously very famous, just not to me. He was very clever and very funny. We would both definitely see him again. That's the benefit of the festival, you find new comedians...

I love the comedy festival as it's lowcost, easy laughs and a great reason to get out of the house.

As they say, Laughter is the best medicine.

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