David Leser

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Day One Of The Margaret River Readers And Writers Festival

Margaret River Readers Writers Festival 2015 Panel The Season of Youth

The Margret River Readers and Writers Festival began today with sessions devoted to Beautiful Seasonal Gardens – with award winning landscape designer Janine Mendel, followed by a Season of Creativity with expedition artist and author Jo Bertini.

After the lunch break we were  introduced to the Season of Discovery which focused on the art of writing memoir by author and journalist David Leser. David has recently written and published his 7th book, ‘To Begin To Know: Walking in the Shadows of my Father’, an honest and poignant narrative that delved into his relationship with his father. In this session David talked about the ethics and impact of writing about the personal.

To Begin to Know David Leser

This led us smoothly into the next session The Season Of Youth – in which a panel of local authors plus special guest David Leser, talked about their autobiographical writing journeys (this session was very successfully chaired by one of my favourite Perth author’s Ray Glickman.) Hello to Ray 🙂

The final session of the day focused on the Nature Writer. Author Victoria Laurie talked about her book ‘The Southwest: Australia’s Biodiversity Hotspot.’

What a great start to an wonderful festival!

I  am looking forward to the official launch later tonight. More soon 🙂

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Save This Date – The Margaret River Readers and Writers Festival 2015

2015 fest image

Save this date:  The Margaret River Readers and Writers Festival is in green light mode, preparations powering along.  The festival will be held over the weekend of the 29th to 31st May and this year will be focussing on the theme “Seasons”.

 

Some of the amazing participants  already locked in and raring to visit our region include but are not limited to;  esteemed authors Michelle de Kretser,  John Marsden and Isobelle Carmody , chef extraordinaire and food and nature writer Sophie Zalokar (from the popular Foragers Field Kitchen & Cooking School in Pemberton, Western Australia), West Australian writers Fiona Palmer, Ray Glickman, Richard Rossiter and Amanda Curtin … and there is more….comedians/ writers/singers, poets, artists/illustrators,  garden designers… journalists, short story writers, biographers and auto biographers, illustrators, crime writers, romance writers,  self published authors….

Some events are free, some included in programing and some are run parallel to the festival and require specific tickets. The official program is available here.

 

There is so much happening…. there will be book signing, book selling, panel discussions, interviews, poetry reading and socialising; a full 3 days of bookish events that you will not want to miss out on. I have heard from a very reliable source that early bird tickets are already selling fast, it is time to plan your trip to Margaret River NOW.  Program information is available here.

 

Check out my blog in the upcoming weeks for book reviews (and the odd interview) relating to guests/participants of the festival , updates on programming, and my personal must attend sessions.