Day Four

To begin our first session on our last day was David Malouf who provided us with inspiration on how to begin writing. The way he engaged the crowd with his great speaking and powerful words and advice made this session enjoyable to attend. As it ended it i was ready for an unforgettable lunch at Stefanos.

Walking in to Stefanos the first thing I was looking for was where would we be standing for our speech! I was a little nervous to be presenting an award in front of well known authors and to the rest of the crowd. The set up was fantastic, very fancy and consisted of a long table where us university students, authors and guests could eat and socialise.

 After a beautiful three course meal of Gnocchi, pork and cake and ice-cream, it was time to present our awards to the deserved winner. Our award was called the 'Citrus Award' and was presented to the author that produced the juiciest quote through out the festival. The winner of our award was Sunil Yappa. "Kindness and compassion is revolutionary thing." I loved it from the very first time i heard it.

Sunil with his prize (a bag of oranges) :) 

After the awards we were lucky enough to have our own personal experience with Sunil Yappa and Nick Gadd. Nick spoke a lot about his blogs and Sunil kindly enough wanted to hear more about us! We gathered in a circle and each of us spoke a bit about ourselves, our experiences with writing and our spiritual animal. I concluded my talk with my spiritual animal (a magpie) because i was a Collingwood supporter. It was funny to see some people cringe :D

To discuss about ourselves, get to know everyone further and have a closer experience with two authors, we couldn't have asked for a better way to end the Mildura Writers Fesitival :)

Day Three

Day Three was a jam packed day! It started off with Jan Owen the Phillip Hodgins Memorial Winner that took the stage. This session really brought out her personality (i thought.) She seems like a polite lady with a big heart. I was quite surprised with some of her poems she read out which i think showed a bit of her naughty and humorous side. Overall it was a fantastic sessions that gave me a bit of laugh.

Emily Bitto and David Malouf took the stage with a read of their fiction books. I enjoyed Emily's book (The strays) so much that I went and brought and have not regretted! A few questions from the crowd were allowed and the authors went more into about becoming a writer and what they thought was easy and what they found difficult.

A quick 10 minute session followed with the winner of the indigenous award. Tony Birch happily presented these people with awards for their writing!

After a fantastic free (yay!) lunch provided by Stefanos, I was quite happy to hear that Les was our next author on stage. Yet again he did not let us down with some hilarious poems he shared with the audience. He concluded with his personal life such as where he writes and what his motivations are to write poetry.

After some fantastic sessions I was buggered by the end of it!

Day Two

Today began with Nick Gadd, followed by Les Murray and Jan who discussed their poetry. Tony Birch, Olga Lrenzo and David Malouf finish of the day with their session.

Nick Gadd began the day with a tour around Mildura. As I have lived in Mildura all my life i thought that i have seen everything. Turns out I hadn't. Nick took s through the main part of Mildura and focused his tour on 'Ghost Signs.' If you have no idea what a ghost sign is like me, A ghost sign is an old hand-painted advertising sign that has been preserved on a building for an extended period of time. The sign may be kept for its nostalgic appeal, or simply indifference by the owner. I seen signs and buildings that i never knew existed till today. Here are some of the buildings we looked at

As we finished our lovely lunch at Sumo Salad it was then time to head upstairs at the Brewery with Les Murray and Jan Owen to talk about poetry. To be honest poetry never interested me, sometimes depending on the vocabulary it was hard to take in. I quite liked Les he was funny and entertaining and made this session enjoyable for me.

After came Olga, Tony and David. They spoke across their books and different perspectives that they had. Overall this day made me more familiarised with what kind of authors they were and their books. They all spoke really well and i quite enjoyed listening. 

Day One 14/7/16

Day One Of Mildura Writers Festival

At the beginning of day one, exciting, intriguing and nerve wrecking thoughts about what this subject was going to look like. Writing has never been a big strength of mine - especially showing my creative side of writing so I was a little nervous to say the least :0

Our day started of in a little classroom downstairs of Latrobe University. We shared a little about ourselves , got know each other as well as our teachers Sue and Helen. We also experienced some small writing activities. I was not surprised with how I struggled to get words down onto paper, though eventually I did, it did not compare to the fantastic poems that some people shared. They were all pros! Sue also posed some interesting questions about writing. What does a writer do? Yes, they write! But as a class we began to reflect and come with the conclusion that a writer does a lot more than put pen to paper. Here is what we reflected on as a class. The questions included:
What does a writer do?
Why is writing important?
What makes good writing, good writing?



Lunch was spent with a fair few of the students in WIA. We instantly hit it off and had a good laugh for an hour or so. It was good to meet new people, a fantastic bunch they were!

After lunch we gathered back to class and did a writing activity that I found to be quite challenging. We went off to the Arts Gallery and looked at a few interesting pieces that people had created. We were to pick one of them and connect the picture to the five senses. What did it feel like? What did it smell like? What did it look like? etc.

To end a brilliant day, we finished off at the Mildura Club where Sunil Yapa who is a fiction writer took the stage and spoke about his book.

"Anger only takes you so far and I found love. That's the hope I found.."  

I immediately fell in love with the book 'Your heart is a muscle the size of a fist.' A story about young Victor- a boyish, scrappy world traveller who's run away from home and sets out to sell marijuana to the 50,000 anti-globalization protesters gathered in the streets. It quickly becomes clear that the throng determined to shut the city down- from environmentalists to teamsters to anarchists- are testing the patience of the police, and what started as a peaceful protest is threatening to erupt into violence.


Through out Sunil's talk he inspired us with some beautiful quotes.

"Kindness and compassion is a revolutionary thing."