FINDING accommodation won't be a problem for writer Charlotte Wood when she is in Bathurst this week to talk about her new novel.
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The winner of the 2016 Stella Prize - a literary award for Australian women writers - has two sisters living in Bathurst, so is a regular visitor.
She is also a Charles Sturt University Bathurst graduate, who says she started to explore creative writing when she came to the campus as a mature aged student around 30 years ago.
"That was when I really started trying it out to see what I could get out of it, whether I was any good at it," she said.
Wood will be in town as part of a promotional tour for her sixth novel, The Weekend, which she says explores "friendship and getting older and the various surprises and challenges and discoveries" that go along with it.
In the book, three women in their 70s come together over a long, hot Christmas weekend to clean out the beach house of their friend Sylvie, who has just died, and re-examine their friendship in the process.
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The Weekend took her about four years to write - longer than usual, but it was delayed because Wood was on the promotional trail for The Natural Way Of Things, winner of the 2016 Stella Prize and joint winner of the Prime Minister's Literary Award.
Wood, who writes in a studio out the back of her home in Marrickville in Sydney's inner west, says she has a rule that she must produce 1000 words a day.
"Sometimes that only takes a couple of hours and sometimes it takes all day," she said. "But it keeps my bum glued to the seat."
Her Bathurst visit will be followed by stops at Brisbane, Adelaide and Melbourne, among others, as Wood meets some of her "lovely, loyal readers" all around the country.
They are also perceptive readers: Wood says she will often have something pointed out about one of her books that she didn't even realise was there.
"And that's a really lovely part of meeting readers," she said.
Charlotte Wood will talk about The Weekend at a BooksPlus event at the Victoria Hotel this Friday, October 18 from 6pm.
Tickets are $15 and are available from BooksPlus on 6331 5994 or by emailing admin@booksplus.com.au. Bookings are essential.
