The 2017 New Norcia Writers’ Festival was a sell-out. The day brought over a hundred people together to enjoy the diverse and engaging sessions set in
the towns stunning heritage interiors.
Nicole Sinclair kicked the day off discussing her debut novel Bloodlines. In conversation with festival director, Will Yeoman, the session was rich with humour and warmth while discussing the novel’s themes and Nicole’s writing techniques plus juggling pregnancies, babies and day-to-day life! Inspirational.
Zen student, former performance poet and creative writing teacher Brigid Lowry discussed her quirky new book Still Life with a Teapot with Charlotte Guest. Brigid, a wise, witty and thoroughly engaging conversationalist offered advice, observations, hope, reality checks and insight into what it’s like to be an ageing woman in the 21st century.
Lunchtime offered the chance to peruse the Indigenous Cultural exhibition and the restored Abbey Press whilst picking up a souvenir bookmark hot off
the press and created by Geoff Moore, printer extraordinaire. After a stirring piano recital by Dom Robert Nixon, UWA Senior lecturer Tony d’Aeth Hughes
led an interesting discussion examining some of Australia’s most well-known and significant writers — Albert Facey, Peter Cowan, Dorothy Hewett, Jack Davis, Elizabeth Jolley, and John Kinsella – and how their literature shapes the human experience of geographical change.
The day ended in the rarely visited, highly decorated, Spanish Chapel where Stephen Scourfield and Will Yeoman created magic and beauty; Stephens’s poetic prose transported us from the wheatbelt to rural England and was accompanied by the soulful strains of classical guitar.
Stephen Scourfield reads in the Spanish Chapel
