Voices in the park
The morning of Sunday, 12 November dawned bright and clear, and by 8.00am, the BRTD festival team were out in Camperdown Park, Newtown, preparing for our big day. As we tidied our tent, tightened our guy ropes and arranged the seating, the park was alive with anticipation. The sound stages were testing their equipment and tuning up, and nearby the ladies from the small Turkish village of Gozlema were busy rolling their dough for the day ahead.
Performance and Self Publishing
After warming up the tent with a group of local poets, we opened with a fascinating session chaired by Irina Dunn, Executive Director of the NSW Writers Centre. Using her vast experience in this area, Irina explored the two primary methods that writers use to publish their books; the conventional method - through an established publishing house, or self published - where all the work is done (and paid for) by the writer. Irina was joined by Suzanne Leal author of Border Street and Andrew O'Keefe, author of The Boss.
Irina led her panel through the tricks and traps of publishing; looking at why a literary agent is essential for anyone hoping to have a book published through the mainstream houses and then exploring the alternative route. Suzanne was extremely supportive of her publisher, Henry Rozenblum from Scribe Publishing, who arranged everything from editing to cover and internal layout design, through to printing, publicity, marketing and distribution.
In Andrew's case, he had chosen to self-publish his work, and therefore had to employ, and pay for the costs of an editor, designer etc, before he could even think about how he might get his work into a bookstore. Andrew was particularly candid about the costs involved in choosing the self-published route. Although publishing with a major publishing house offers a security and distribution reach that is hard to match when self-publishing, let's not forget that both John Grisham and Mathew Riley started their writing careers by self publishing their work.
Authors Talk About Writing
Our two internationally acclaimed authors, Kate Grenville and David Malouf were a great coup and drew a huge crowd. Kate Grenville was on the shortlist this year for the Booker Prize for The Secret River. David Malouf's talked about his latest collection of short stories Every Move You Make, with its diverse range of colourful characters.
Amongst their many discussion points were the uses of history in fiction, and whether or not they reveal more of themselves in fiction or non-fiction. It was a mesmerising hour that was over all too soon.
Biography Secrets
Linda Funnell, publisher with Harper Collins introduced her panel of Jenny Kee and Angelo Loukakis who examined the different strands that writers use when telling their life stories. In part this panel was inspired by Oprah Winfrey and her meeting with James Frey, author of A Thousand Little Pieces. Oprah was horrified to learn that James' memoir wasn't all completely true and so the panel discussed the difference between a biography and a memoir and also explored the art of telling your family history as a work of fiction. Angelo Loukakis's book, The Memory of Tides, is loosely based on his family's story, while Jenny Kee's book, A Big Life is a traditional tell-all biography. Jenny amused the audience with tales of London in Swinging Sixties and a complete description of her outfit.
Food
Local foodie Paul van Reyk is passionate believer in the culinary delights of King Street and Enmore Road so he was the obvious choice to lead his two panellists, Michelle Cranston and Ross Dobson through a smorgasbord of gastronomic experiences. Michelle is editor of the successful Marie Claire series while Ross has recently completed Chinatown. The panel explored a myriad of cooking possibilities and debated some of the big issues including, "Is the Melbourne foodie scene better than Sydney's?"
Travel
Our travel panel was chaired by Patti Miller, from Sydney University's Centre for Continuing Education, although as the author of Writing Your Life, she suggested she should have been part of the opening session. However with her panel of Margo Daley and Siobhan McHugh she examined Proust's quote; "The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes". Both Margo and Siobhan brought considerable experience to the panel, in the areas of travel writing, creating an oral history and in their work for the CCE where they lead travel and study groups to exotic locations.
Chaser goes wild
But our day concluded, as it has for the past three years, with an appearance from the incorrigible Chaser team.
This year we were joined by Julian, Chris and Grigor and for an hour they answered audience questions with their usual trademark wit.
Along the way we learnt about the most dangerous skits, the number of arrests, the occasions when they'd been forced to use a set-up to avoid personal injury, and some of their more famous moments such as the time they booked Mr Al Queda and Ms Terri Rist on a Virgin flight and then failed to board.
End of a Lovely day
At the end of the day we packed up our tent, tired yet happy and looking forward to doing it again next year. We thank all the presenters who freely gave of their time, knowledge and their love of writing, and we thank our two publisher sponsors Penguin Group Australia and Random House Australia for their support.
More pictures of the event
