Wow! What a fabulous few days we’ve had at the Sydney Writers Festival. The Carriageworks is a great venue – plenty of space, groovy eateries and bars, and wonderful lounges to relax after author sessions. It has a great central hub that makes it easy for people to mingle and meet, and watch the authors zooming through to their next appearance. It was an interesting line-up – contemporary and political – which really worked with the Carriageworks’ hip vibe. Today (Saturday), the younger (working) crowds flooded in, and the atmosphere was fun and lively: the farmers’ market next door was just an added advantage, and all will attest to the BRILLIANT weather!!
Beauty and the beasts: Sarah Mills, Richard Fidler, Kate Forsyth at the SWF.
In the past few days, your intrepid Word of Mouth TV team has interviewed Pulitzer Prize winner Jennifer Egan about her latest novel Manhattan Beach; debut novelist Sophie Green, author of the Inaugural Meeting of the Fairvale Ladies Club; the amazing Annabel Crabb, who talks about her upcoming cookbook Special Guest (the sequel to Special Delivery) which comes out in November; and the inimitable Richard Fidler, at the festival to promote Saga Land, which he co-wrote with Kari Gislason – a combination of memoir, myth and history. They were all kind enough to share the best book they’d read lately and their favourite cookbook.
We will be loading these stories to the blog over the next week and the film footage as Sound Bites. We hope you enjoy watching them as much as we enjoyed the filming of them.
We were thrilled by all the books and attended several sessions, including debut sensation Holly Ringland, and Sarah Krasnostein’s very popular biography The Trauma Cleaner.
Every other spare minute was devoted to our Vox Pop where we interviewed random attendees and got them to recommend their favourite books and cookbooks – that was so much fun – everyone was so vibrant, funny, articulate and charming and they were really enjoying the day. Quite a few recommended The Trauma Cleaner, which was also the pick of Annabel Crabb. Stay tuned!
