A CHARLES Sturt University graduate has been selected for one of the feature events of the city's annual readers' festival.
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Kylie Needham, an award-winning screenwriter, released her debut novel Girl In A Pink Dress in 2023.
Readers and local book groups are being invited to read the book in the lead-up to the Bathurst Writers' and Readers' Festival in May and then participate in the Great Festival Read session to hear a panel discussion, after which Ms Needham will appear in-conversation.
This year's panellists will be artist Genevieve Carroll, Maryanne Jaques from Arts Out West, author and educator Paul Stafford and journalist and CSU alumni Jac Underwood.
Previous Great Festival Read selections
- 2019: Hare's Fur by Blue Mountains author Trevor Shearston. A story of art, grief, kindness and transformation.
- 2020: The Yield by Tara June Winch. Exploring the significance of Wiradyuri culture from historical and contemporary perspectives, with a key focus on dispossession and endurance.
- 2021: Kate Kelly: The True Story of Ned Kelly's Little Sister by Rebecca Wilson. A moving biography that tells her astonishing story in full.
- 2022: When We Fall by Aoife Clifford. An atmospheric suspense novel.
- 2023: Iris by Fiona Kelly McGregor. A fierce, fascinating tale of a woman who couldn't be held back.
Author Aoife Clifford, who grew up in Bathurst but now writes crime fiction in Melbourne, told the Western Advocate recently that the selection of her novel When We Fall as the Great Festival Read in 2022 set off a chain of events that heavily influenced her latest book.
"Unfortunately, COVID got in the way of our actual event [in 2022], but we did an event on Zoom for it and what I found so amazing was that people had read it so closely and were able to point me to bits of Bathurst in the book that I had done subconsciously," she said.
With that in mind, Ms Clifford said she made a conscious decision to base the fictional location of her new book, It Takes A Town, on Bathurst.
This year's Bathurst Writers' and Readers' Festival will be held from May 24 to 26 at Bathurst Memorial Entertainment Centre.
Girl In A Pink Dress, set in both the Sydney art world and a remote mountain town, is described as "a sharp-eyed and compelling story about love and art, about sacrifice and ambition, and the often damaging relationship between artist and muse".
Organisers say the Great Festival Read session time and details will be announced in the festival program to be released in April.
Copies of Girl In A Pink Dress are available from BooksPlus and Bathurst Library.
