BATHURST Writers’ and Readers’ Festival is an annual event which will this year take place from May 4-6.
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This year, for the first time, the festival will take place on the Charles Sturt University Campus at the Ponton Theatre and all sessions will be free to attend.
The festival includes live streaming from Sydney Writers’ Festival (SWF) through their Live and Local program. This year’s theme for the SWF is ‘Power’.
Highlights of the streamed sessions this year include Peter Greste. Hugh Riminton will be speaking to Peter about the threat to investigative journalism in the age of fake news and terrorism.
Another well-known Australian journalist highlighting at the festival is Sarah Ferguson, who will discuss her book On Mother. In conversation with Louise Adler, the four time Walkley-Award winning journalist reflects on the complex bonds between mothers and daughters.
The Bathurst Writers’ and Readers’ Festival includes local sessions, which include workshops, panel discussions, play readings and talks.
There are some exciting workshops this year. On Friday, May 4, secondary school students will attend creative writing workshops with JC Burke and Megan Jacobson.
On Saturday, May 5 at 9.30am, authors Kim Kelly and Dean Mobbs will host an independent publishing workshop, going through the process of how they each navigated the way to get their words out into the world.
On Sunday, May 6 at 9.30am, Charlotte Calder, an award-winning author of books for children and youth, will run a workshop for children in years five and six. Places in these workshops are available by contacting Books Plus to register on 6331 5994
Local poets have the opportunity to participate in a Poetry Slam on the Saturday evening. Prizes include original artworks from Dean Mobbs Gallery. You can register for the Slam on the day of the event.
The festival’s official opening will be held on Friday, May 4 at 6.30pm. This will be followed by a talk by Ashleigh Young, a New Zealand writer and editor and winner of the Windham-Campbell Literature Prize for Non-Fiction, awarded by Yale University, in recognition of her essay collection Can You Tolerate This?.
All of the sessions at the Bathurst Writers’ and Readers’ Festival are free to attend. Donations from generous local sponsors have made this possible.
The full program for the Bathurst Writers’ and Readers’ Festival is available from Books Plus, Bathurst Memorial Entertainment Centre and online at bmec.com.au
