A Writers and Readers Festival on a Regenerative farm north of Albury in southern NSW. A TWO DAY EVENT!

Saturday March 13 2021 - Writers in Conversation from 9am to 4.30pm. Saturday night a Paddock to Plate Dinner with Alison Pouliot author of The Allure of Fungi. Local produce, includes a Glass of wine from Posh Plonk.

Sunday March 14 Creative Writing with leading authors on the farm. Small groups being absorbed in the landscape, 10am to 2.30pm.

FESTIVAL PROGRAM

Saturday 13th March 2021: Writers in Conversation with Margaret Hickey

• 09:00am    Coffee Available on Site
• 09:30am    Welcome & Introduction to Earth Canvas
• 10:00am    Patti Miller in Conversation on The Joy of High Places
• 11:00am    Karen Viggers in Conversation on The Orchardist’s Daughter
• 12:00pm    Teresa Benetos: a Panel in Conversation with Lynette Ainsworth on Everyone has a Story: Getting Started in Writing 
• 12:30pm    Lunch 
• 01:15pm    Marg Hickey in Conversation with Lynette Ainsworth on Rural Dreams
• 02:15pm    Richard Anderson in Conversation on Small Mercies
• 03:15pm    Kim Mahood in Conversation on Position Doubtful
• 04:30pm    Close 

Saturday 13th March: Paddock to Plate Dinner

• 6:00 to 10:00pm

Dinner Speaker: Alison Pouliot, Writing in Place – A Thousand Days in the Forest

Sunday 14th March: Farm Landscape Writing Workshops –

Drawing from the Landscape

workshops are open to everyone - readers, writers or anyone wanting to explore the joy of writing

• 9:30am Coffee Available on Site
• 10:00am Welcome
• 10:15am Workshops in the Paddock
• 02:30pm Close

Download our Flyer for all the details about the weekend.

Don't miss the book lovers event of the year!

WRITERS' BIOGRAPHIES

 RICHARD ANDERSON is a writer and second-generation farmer from northern New South Wales. He has been running a beef-cattle farm for twenty-five years, but has also worked as a miner and had a stint on the local council. Richard is the author of The Good Teacher (Harper Collins) and two rural-crime novels, Retribution and Boxed (Scribe).  His new novel is Small Mercies.  Richard lives with his wife, Sue, three dogs, and a cat.

PATTI MILLER is an award winning writer, tutor and mentor. She is the author of nine books of non-fiction, memoir and fiction as well as writing texts and including The Mind of a Thief, Ransacking Paris, Writing True Stories and her latest work The Joy of High Places.  Patti founded Life Stories Workshop in 1991 and offers non-fiction and memoir classes in Australia, Fiji, Bali, London and Paris.

KIM MAHOOD is the author of Craft for a Dry Lake, which won both the 2000 Age Book of the year and 2001 NSW Premiers Award for non-fiction, and Position Doubtful, which received multiple short-listings including 2016 Victorian Premier’s Award for non-fiction, 2017 National Biography Award and 2017 Queensland Literary Awards. Kim’s essays have been published widely and her art work is held in state, territory and regional galleries.

ALISON POULIOT is a natural historian and environmental photographer who uses words and images to evoke stories of the living world, as well as the non-living. Alison is especially interested in forgotten corners and lifeforms; the stuff that slips between the cracks and is partial to the fungal and the spineless. Alison released her book, The Allure of Fungi in 2018 and is an Honorary Fellow at the Australian National University.

KAREN VIGGERS is a wildlife veterinarian and author of four internationally bestselling novels: The Stranding, The Lightkeeper’s Wife, The Grass Castle and The Orchardist’s Daughter. Karen writes contemporary realist fiction set in Australian landscapes. Her books tackle contentious issues, and explore connection with the bush, grief and loss, healing in nature, family, marriage and friendship.

TERESA BENETOS is currently working on, The Accidental Hostage, a memoir of how she became a hostage while working as a nurse in Iraq in 1990.  Teresa also writes poetry and has been published in the Irish Times Abroad.  Teresa has one daughter and lives with her husband, four cats and a dog; in her professional life Teresa has delivered many addresses to large audiences.
 

Presenter & Author Biography

MARG HICKEY is an award-winning playwright and author. She holds a PhD in Australian literature, lectures at La Trobe University, is a regular guest on ABC radio and a judge for the Joseph Furphy literature prize. Marg’s research involves rural landscapes and examines how regional communities adapt in the age of the Anthropocene.  Rural Dreams, her new collection of short stories is written through the lens of landscape and takes a look at life outside the big smoke, introducing us to the kind of characters you might expect in the country, as well as some you might not.  Marg lives in Beechworth with her husband and three sons. 

LYNETTE AINSWORTH is nearing completion of, Someone Must Pay, a memoir of herself as a naïve business woman abandoned in China to close a business during the Global Financial Crisis and in the process she learned the Art of War.  In 2019, Lynette was awarded a scholarship as Artist in Residence at The Old Schoolhouse, Mt. Wilson.

WORKSHOP OUTLINES - Sunday March 14  8 from 10 am to 2.30 pm

RICHARD ANDERSON
Writing Nature; Remembering History
Richard’s workshop will focus on writing about and finding inspiration in Australian nature while including the context of its history.  The landscape we live in is a transformed one:  first by the indigenous people then by white settlement and development.  So when we see, hear and sense nature we need to remember it is almost never pristine.

MARG HICKEY
Writing the Land in 2021
Australian literature has a long tradition of being inspired by landscape. In this workshop, we look at the ways early white writers viewed the land and the necessary cultural shift which has taken place in contemporary writing. Through a series of exercises on perspective, personal experience and current understandings we will endeavor to write the land as we see it, in 2021.

KIM MAHOOD
Place, Land, Landscape & Country
In Kim’s workshop participants will carry out several exercises that require them to observe, experience and write about place/land/landscape/country in different ways. There will be an introduction to a range of ideas, and a discussion of the writing people produce in the workshop.

PATTI MILLER
Writing the Senses
Patti will offer a writing workshop which can be used by both memoir and fiction writers.  The aim of the workshop is to create strong detailed writing which appeals to the senses.  It’s an enjoyable and practical approach to getting out of the head (abstract, orderly, analytical) and into the body (warm, sensual, vivid).  The workshop will engage participants with readings, discussion and writing exercises to heighten their observation and enrich their expression.

ALISON POULIOT
Visual Narratives – Finding Words through Images.
As forms of artistic expression, photography and poetry share much in common.  Both are the outcome of intense honing, of distillation, of eloquent exactitude.  Both can convey a point of view or story that goes beyond mere description.  Photographers often borrow literary devices such as irony, but writers also have much to gain from photographs.  This workshop explores the crossovers and co-habitations of words and images and how they might enhance and inspire one another. 

KAREN VIGGERS
Immersing in Country: Light in the Landscape.
In Karen’s workshop participants will use memory, free verse, character and the senses to find inspiration in place.

Writers at the Woolshed: Dinner Speaker

ALISON POULIOT
Writing in Place – A Thousand Days in the Forest
Between 2012 and 2016, photographer, ecologist and author Alison Pouliot spent a thousand days in the forests of twelve countries.  She sought fungi and their followers and the answer to one question – why are fungi regarded so differently to other forms of life?  Alison recorded her findings – in a 100,000 words – in situ, with a notebook and pencil.  Her work has been published in a new book, The Allure of Fungi.

In an increasingly virtual and less sensorial world, writing in place enables one to tune to the seasons, rhythms and nuances of the surrounds.  It nurtures the imagination and offers the chance to roam uncharted territory, both literally and allegorically.  It opens possibilities for serendipity and risk, space for intuition and curiosity.  Australia’s vast and ancient landscapes relative to Europe’s geologically young terrain helped recalibrate notions of time and space, to imagine another outlook on uncertain futures.  Most importantly, writing in place provided the opportunity to foster the ‘ecologies of creativity’ necessary for an ecologically resilient and socially just future.

In this talk Alison will share her experiences of the forest, visual impressions and some excerpts from her book.
 

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