#bbwf2014 Scrapbook

How lucky we were - a spontaneous decision to go to this year's Byron Bay Writers' Festival for a Saturday treat, happened just in time.

 Shortly after purchasing our tickets, the #bbwf2014 sold out!
B-Y-R-O-N   B-A-Y
W-R-I-T-E-R-S  F-E-S-T-I-V-A-L
It was a hard choice. 

 After carefully poring over the program we decided on which panels to attend:
Indigenous literacy; crime fiction; writing true crime; Indigenous leadership; ex-Prime Minister, Malcolm Fraser in conversation with Kerry O'Brien; a report card from five writer's and their roadtrip; and to finish the day we worked out how to arrive early to secure a good seat for what we knew would be a packed out session with a lively ensemble of media heavy weights.















Welfare’s share of total spending has fallen over the past decade and Australians are less welfare-dependent, not more.
Read more here
[The Guardian Aus 4 August]











Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Abundance

Image
  Eight currawongs sitting in a tree.  2am 8 June 2026 Monday,  Canberra  On my return from Sorry Business, the autumn leaves are down to the stragglers. ... There is no English equivalent to Sorry Business. Once the leap was made – the written word caught up to the much older oral accounts – some words in common emerged. How’s your Quantum Physics? Start there gentle reader, discover quantum mechanics, be enthralled by Theory. The trigger for a period of retreat and self care – Sorry Business - is death. In perpetuity, melancholy. In the evertime, abundance. ... I used a quarter tank of premium unleaded to reduce my footprint in preparation for emergence of a new world order. Unlike the Covid-frenzy 2019, this time around I collapsed what I want and what I need into the same list. During Sorry Business, the necessary work continues.  I serviced my car so I’m able to go home, ten hours away, in an instant. I fixed my car stereo so I enjoy being in my car. I boug...
Read more

Reflections #ewf14

Image
A recap of a week in blogging, inspired by the Emerging Writers' Festival , Melbourne, Australia. A lady of letters in residence of late in the hills of the Northern Rivers - the lush upper reaches of New South Wales - takes flight for a week of literary festival, trams and temperate weather on Kulin country, otherwise known as Melbourne. ‘More than an opening night to a writers' festival - it was an awakening….’ Blog link :  Arrival #ewf14 This was one of those break open, take a good look at yourself and re assemble with optimism literary festival days. Get all the information you think you need – and write. Do your research and decide what is best for you – to publish. Yes, you will bullied, distracted, teased, humiliated and hectored by those who don’t understand a writer’s life – and so, writing is the only freedom you will ever know. If you want a friend – create them. If you think you have e...
Read more

#mwf14 Blog-to-book Update 1.

Image
After blogging on every thing that caught my fancy over the past two years - from arts and culture, to social media, politics, and back in time to a shared history and the stories that keep my family alive - a secret wish has come true. Looking back now at my occasional brain snaps that were never posted, I know now how the final three Survivors feel when they walk down memory lane to read the spikes named for fallen cast members. I'm glad they never made it. (And if you are not a fan of the best mind game show on tv, please note, the players face elimination, not extermination.) . #MWF14 Blurb blog-to-book challenge Day 1 – Receive the news. Ask Garry to repeat it, just in case I had misheard that I am a Joint Winner of the  Melbourne Writers Festival ~ Blurb Blog-to-book challenge . Day 2 – Tell everyone and bask in their congratulations as we all get our head around what it actually means. Make up a list of people I can count on for honest feedba...
Read more

Modern Living IV

Image
  IV.  Uniapon Pronounced:  U-nye-a-pon Part of the Queensland Literary Awards, the David Unaipon Award is for an outstanding unpublished manuscript by an emerging Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander writer. Established in 1988, the award is named in honor of David Unaipon (1872–1967), a Ngarrindjeri author, inventor, and activist who was the first Aboriginal writer to be published in Australia. When I won the Uniapon, I hadn’t prepared a speech.  I really wanted to win that year. The Queensland Literary Awards 2012 had been cancelled by the Qld Government. The Awards went ahead in a tidal wave of volunteers and good will. There was no prize money as per previous years.  That was the award I wanted to win, so I finished my first manuscript in a month, drove with my sister to Queensland and submitted it at Avid Reader Bookshop, West End, Brisbane with 15 minutes to spare. Winners are invited to read from their manuscript.  I jumped on and rode the spect...
Read more

Modern Living V

Image
  V.  Media Sunday night, Canberra, Australia In a clear sky, Betelgeuse arcs on my right, Jupiter is retrograde and Sirius and Procyon are bright tonight. If you were on Twitter a decade ago, you could feel when it began to decay. But there was a time before, when it hit the sweet spot. Of them all, the only digital platform I was interested in spending time on was Twitter. I spent about a year watching it. I decided what was important: Ethics & etiquette. Punctuation. I’m a writer, not a journalist. Tweetyarns would be live, and a maximum of 7 minutes between posts to optimize placement in the feed. Have a schedule, the discipline is good for me. Use my full name. … I thought about: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly 2007 (French: Le Scaphandre et le Papillon) Hunger 2008 Son of Saul 2015 (Hungarian: Saul fia) What to say when it is difficult? How to get close enough? How to write the human condition? Who am I to tell the stories? ...
Read more

Modern Living I

Image
  I.  Caucasians The seven year old said, why is the man showing people his penis? She’d been drawn to the window in a teachable moment, to see a nearby balcony. It had been gradual in the lead up to a fully naked man standing in full view in broad daylight. Some of the others had seen penis. What his penis looked like was dismissed as irrelevant. He had fast become a digestive tract attached to a penis, there was no other indication of a higher life form. He’s tanning, we heavily sanitized. But I’m a child, she said.  It looked like more of the same, until the fleshlight developed frizzy hair of an actual person of indeterminate gender. Fellatio on his balcony before all the kids had gone to bed. Sexual positions so awkward, surely this was a financial arrangement.  I’m confident none on our side of the street reciprocated with displays of vagina. A dick pic – always unwelcome and pathetic - had evolved into live action on a tiny balcony on a narrow street heavily l...
Read more

#NaNoWriMo - rolling blog post

Image
Things I Learnt from #NaNoWriMo2015 ~~ 3 January 2016 It’s fun – it feels like a month long writers retreat. The Twitter NaNoWriMo dedicated accounts and all the participants make sure that the hashtag runs hot for the entire month with tweets and photos. Photos of writing spaces, writing food, writing inspiration. You get the picture, it is dedicated to everything that is on a writer's mind.  I imagined my part of NaNoWriMo World was a large castle.  The dining room is open all hours and I was kept well informed of what people were eating and drinking.  The grand estate had beautifully appointed rooms, gardens galore: landscaped, secret rooms, running brooks and shady passages.  Freshly brewed coffee was on offer by the gallon, copius quantities of cats (mostly) kept us company and I could read a blow by blow account from other writers via the hashtag of how the words were falling on to the page. Will Self said recently, that a writer sentences ...
Read more

#TweetYarn

I use my blog to announce what’s next; pitch ideas & invite collaborations. Disclaimer: I am not associated with any group or organisation unless specified. UPDATE 23 October 2014: the links to these tweetyarns have been removed, pending publication of my blog to book, On Dusk which will be available for purchase from Amazon December 2014. In the meantime - please feel free to download a FREE anthology of Indigenous Australian writing, which includes one of my tweetyarns 'Maisie May' (mentioned below) and a short story that does not appear anywhere else...'Epilogue to Maisie May' here UPDATE 25 July: Six new tweetyarns - links [are no longer] here I’m an emerging writer/screenwriter. I use social media to promote my writing & my ideas. I wanted to see what was possible using new technologies so I created '  #tweetyarns '. I am Aboriginal. ‘Yarn’ has special significance to Indigenous Australians. I started telling...
Read more

Modern Living III

Image
  III. Vagus Vagus: Latin for "wandering", "straying", "unsettled" I always ask first, can I touch you? Self care is his passage to redemption. I introduced mon loup to the vagus nerve. How to describe a sensation someone has never felt? That he may well have associated vagus nerve resets with the gambling resort in Nevada added to the spell. I’ve controlled the wind in my ears and the tidal pulsation in my neck ever since I can remember, before I learnt it was a function of substance.  In 2026, the head tilt and stretch is a common sight. I attempted to reach the nerve via one of the points in his hand, ”It’s soothing and no-one knows you’re doing it.” Like peeing in the sea. In my case, I’m hip deep and not just ankles. … Music can also stimulate in remarkable ways. Solo, Clean Bandit, Demi Lovato is a constant ebb and flow. … Tonight’s revelation: The Killers, When You Were Young It hits just right in places, getting stronger in time with the song. The...
Read more

Recap of 2014

Image
My highlights of 2014?     Too many to count, but for me I'd have to include filmmaking masterclasses, writers festivals, radio interviews, tweet yarns, new collaborations and seeing where experimenting with digital spaces could take me. My goals for 2014 were simple and ambitious - to be published more, to get closer to seeing one of my scripts on screen and to become a better writer. I was also looking for reasons to travel. Social media was a constant companion but I needed to get out more.  And how did it end?   I won the chance to have my blog published. So I dragged everything worth putting in to a book (short stories, tweet yarns, brain dumps) off my blog for editing and you can read about the fairly chaotic* progress I made with that process   here .  Just when I was seeing daylight, I pounced on an opportunity to pitch a TV script and get a chance to knock it into shape with professionals ... and was overjoyed when I was selected for that t...
Read more