O ne of the most extraordinary experiences I have had during my time as a La Trobe University student has been attending the Writer’s Festival in Mildura, as I learned a great deal about what direction I wanted to take my writing career in while also being fortunate enough to meet many writers in the industry who put their life and career into perspective for me. I was also captivated by the overall sense of community between the locals of Mildura who came out to the sessions during the festival; while the interaction and support of the writers had for each other was quite fascinating to see. A week before the commencement for the festival I wrote an article on Gail Jones (see here) who was one of the writers coming to Mildura, where I noted my hopes to meet and interview her if I got the chance. However, I did feel as though I spent the whole half of the festival nervous as it was all building up to her session yet despite this I was able to have an interview with Gail and a
[This piece is written about my experience of hearing the writers read out their works on the final day of the festival, which provided a whole new dimension to hearing and seeing the characters and settings in their novels.] S omething I found to be quite extraordinary was the emotions in the voices for the writers, who all created something so powerful when they read the words out aloud from the pages of their novel, bringing the characters out into the world and giving them life. Unlike the thoughts in my short poem ‘I am a child to my emotions' where I spoke about how we all recognize characters in a certain way, it is from the authors readings that this idea is challenged. The audience was able to witness the true uniqueness of these characters, and listen as they came alive though the voice of the author who created them. Though there where many readings on the final Sunday sessions, it was Helen Garner and Jason Porter's reading session that struck me the most,