writers in action fesitval mildura

O ne of the most extraordinary experiences I have had during my time as a La Trobe University student has been attending the Writer’s Festival in Mildura, as I learned a great deal about what direction I wanted to take my writing career in while also being fortunate enough to meet many writers in the industry who put their life and career into perspective for me. I was also captivated by the overall sense of community between the locals of Mildura who came out to the sessions during the festival; while the interaction and support of the writers had for each other was quite fascinating to see.  A week before the commencement for the festival I wrote an article on Gail Jones (see here) who was one of the writers coming to Mildura, where I noted my hopes to meet and interview her if I got the chance. However, I did feel as though I spent the whole half of the festival nervous as it was all building up to her session yet despite  this I was able to have an interview with G...

[This piece is written about my experience of hearing the writers read out their works on the final day of the festival, which provided a whole new dimension to hearing and seeing the characters and settings in their novels.] S omething I found to be quite extraordinary was the emotions in the voices for the writers, who all created something so powerful when they read the words out aloud from the pages of their novel, bringing the characters out into the world and giving them life. Unlike the thoughts in my short poem ‘I am a child to my emotions' where I spoke about how we all recognize characters in a certain way, it is from the authors readings that this idea is challenged. The audience was able to witness the true uniqueness of these characters, and listen as they came alive though the voice of the author who created them.  Though there where many readings on the final Sunday sessions, it was Helen Garner and Jason Porter's reading session that struck me the most,...

T hough there will be a variety of authors attending this year’s Writers Festival in Mildura who will all bring something new and fascinating to our arts education, for me personally I have felt drawn in with mysterious fascination by the Australian writer Gail Jones, whose collections of work have peaked my curiosity into what kind of insight she will provide in her talk ‘The Art of Writing’, alongside Helen Garner with Michael Meehan. At first when I begun to research the festival program and the people who would be holding the sessions, Jones seemed to be someone who stood out to me the most for honestly no particular reason. It was after looking into her articles of work and coming across her novel A Guide to Berlin (2015) that I began to grow interested in her as an author.   Mildura Writers Festival guest author: Gail Jones At first I thought the novel was simply just what it says in its title; that it was a tour guide for Berlin; but in actual fact it is a nove...

[ This piece is a hybrid between poetic and short story, and it is about how the characters in novels all appear different to each individual reader, as we all build personalities, looks, feelings etc. not just from the image the writers tells us to build, but from our own emotions and thoughts as well. We all see characters, even the most infamous ones; in a different way. ] I close my eyes and I can see you. I open them, and now I hear you.   A character that was built from your vocabulary is now ripped from the pages and given a new life here with my commentary. For I will see you as the heroin you truly are despite the hand you were dealt, I construct you now to know the emotions I have felt.  I open to the book to the beginning of our journey and wonder what your author wants me to see, what do they want me to know? Standing in the wings are the characters who await your plot needs, but do you really want to be the hero they see to lead?  ...

"The power of connections"- A review of Gail Jones' A Guide to Berlin (2015) Photo taken by Erica Little S et within the wintery European city of Berlin, A guide to Berlin (2015) is a powerful narrative driven by the emotional connections between a group of foreigners and their personal stories. As a veteran Australian writer, Gail Jones brilliantly captures the individualism of each person’s life and culture in her novel, as they are simply outsiders who stick together in foreign country. Despite their commonality however, a single ripple effect through the group divides them and eventually forces them to collide. This novel centres around the main character Cass, an Australian who journeys to Berlin and joins a group of travellers from all around the world for a ‘speak memory’, in which they disclose the intimate stories of their lives and how they came to be the person they are today. As the reader follows Cass throughout her journey in getting ...