Salisbury Writer’s Festival
Whether it is a travel feature, a fiction or a true story or even an art review, writing with flare is not so easy as it is for the readers.Readers come from heterogeneously complex backgrounds and giving them food of satisfaction is tougher than anything one does. And ability to address the sentiments of this heterogeneity is all about the best quality for a passionate writer.
That’s what I learnt today – at the Salisbury Writer’sFestival. Of many events, I was fortunate enough to listen to array of popular writers at the forum today. This was my first encounter with so many writers and lovers of literature since my arrival in Australia three years ago.
Being not my first language, it’s always very difficult to understand the sensibility of English and the context of its use. That leaves whacky and bizarre scars on my aptitude in getting every sense of this language.
Yet I could not stop laughing today at the festival as I listened to journalist Petra Starke. In simple but very powerful, true but uncanny pictures of journalist’s life was unravelled in the ‘caricature’ language. Despite being my journalist and faced with those circumstances, I never thought that my own story of hectic life would be so funny and entertaining for others to listen.
Petra is Arts Editor with Advertiser, the Adelaide-based newspaper.
The other interesting character that I loved listening wasSean Williams, of the best selling authors of the New York Times. The easy to get his intro is ‘Doctor Who’. With over 42 books to his credit, I vaguely imagined such a celebrity would be so simple, approachable and so welcoming. However,like his subjects of fantasy and fiction, his speech was kinda fiction. Look!You would have loved listening him had the organiser allowed for recording –audio or video.
Dyan Blacklock was one of the panellists I admired. If you have no passion, no patience, don’t become writer, she said. While technological advances such as blogs and ebooks give challenge to the traditional book culture, Dyan says whatever may be the form, reading industry and reading culture is here to survive.
Paying $60 for a day’s session was worth satisfying. Looking forward to next year’s event.