Wednesday 20 October and Thursday 21 October 2021Banksia Room

Mt Claremont Community Centre and Library

Welcome to A Day of Literary Feasting at Mt Claremont Community Centre. This two-day event celebrates reading, writing and publishing.

On Wednesday 20 October the program will include a morning writing workshop with the ever popular Annabel Smith followed by an insightful

talk by Deborah Hunn and Georgia Richter authors of How to be an Author.

Thursday 21 October delivers a smorgasbord of author talks from Susan Midalia, Josephine Taylor, Pip Drysdale and Polly Phillips.

We would like to say a special thank you to Westbooks, who will have a pop-up shop with books by our guest speakers available for purchase.

Cash and card welcome.

Registrations are now open for the full two-day program or individual sessions.

We hope you enjoy A Day of Literary Feasting 2021 and are inspired by our special guests.

Susan WestEvent Organiser

Despina SwainLibrary Services Coordinator

Wednesday 20 October

9.00am – 9.20am

9.20am – 9.30am

9.30am – 12.30pm

12.30pm – 1.15pm

1.15pm – 2.15pm

Thursday 21 October

9.00am – 9.20am

9.20am – 9.30am

9.30am – 10.30am

10.45am – 11.45am

11.45pm – 12.30pm

12.30pm – 1.30pm

1.45pm – 2.45pm

Registration and morning refreshments

Welcome

Annabel Smith – Writing Workshop: Building a Sustainable Writing Practice

Lunch

Deborah Hunn and Georgia Richter - How to be an Author

Registration and morning refreshments

Welcome

Susan Midalia - Everyday Madness

Josephine Taylor - Eye of a Rook

Lunch

Pip Drysdale - The Paris Affair

Polly Phillips - My Best Friend’s Murder

The Program

Annabel Smith – Keeping the Ball Rolling: Building a Sustainable Writing PracticeWednesday 20 October 9.30am – 12.30pm

Join Annabel as she workshops the latest research from self-help, psychology and business genres and applies it creatively via:

• Solution-focused strategies• Goal-setting techniques• Support networks• Accountability• Habit-building

This workshop will be suited to writers at any career stage or skill level.Annabel Smith is the author of interactive digital novel/app The Ark, US bestseller Whisky Charlie Foxtrot, and A New Map of the Universe, which was shortlisted for the WA Premier’s Book Award. She is an Australia Council Creative Australia Fellow, holds a PhD in Writing and teaches for Australian Writers Centre.For information about Annabel visit her website annabelsmith.com

WorkshopDeborah Hunn and Georgia Richter -How to be an AuthorWednesday 20 October 1.15pm – 2.15pm

If you dream of being published, this book will teach you the nuts and bolts of what it means to be an author. In a friendly, informative and practical way, Georgia Richter and Deborah Hunn share all you need to know about inspiration and research, preparing to submit to a publisher, creating an author brand, legal, ethical and moral considerations, pitching, effective social media and much more.

Georgia Richter has an MA (Creative Writing) from the University of Western Australia and is an IPEd Accredited Editor. She has taught creative writing, professional writing and editing at the Universities of Melbourne and Western Australia, as well as Curtin University. Georgia joined Fremantle Press in 2008 as the fiction, narrative non-fiction and poetry publisher.

Deborah Hunn is a Lecturer in Creative Writing in the School of Media, Creative Arts and Social Inquiry at Curtin University. Deborah completed a PhD at the University of Western Australia and has taught at universities in Western Australia and South Australia. Her award-winning work has been published in a range of

anthologies, edited collections and journals, and includes shorts stories, creative non-fiction, academic essays on literature, film and television, and reviews.

Author talk

Susan Midalia – Everyday MadnessThursday 21 October 9.30am – 10.30am

Everyday Madness focuses on the nature of love in various forms: marital, familial, sexual, and the love between friends. Susan wanted readers to consider, for example, what it might mean for a couple to be trapped in a loveless marriage; what it might mean when a mother doesn’t love her son, or when a different kind of mother stifles her daughter with care; and how love between female friends can be a source of solidarity as well as an accommodation of differences. Everyday Madness also explores the ways in which usually rational people can become irrational, sometimes extravagantly so, under the pressure of personal and social circumstances.

The character of Gloria becomes clinically depressed after decades of her husband’s emotional and psychological abuse. Bernard, too, begins to understand the nature of depression when he loses his job. The character of Meg, scarred by her husband’s infidelity, begins to lose her grip on reality. The child Ella also distorts reality because of her need for peer approval. Despite all this damage and debilitation Everyday Madness also offers the possibility of hope. In dealing with different forms of ‘madness,’ it appeals to a range of readers: male and female; adult and young adult; the more general reader and those with a more sophisticated knowledge of literature.

Susan is a former academic who resigned from teaching in 2006 to become a full-time fiction writer. She has since published three collections of short stories, all of them shortlisted for major Australian literary awards, and two novels: The Art of Persuasion (2018) and Everyday Madness (2021). Susan is a writer of character; endlessly fascinated by the complexities, contradictions and subtleties of human behaviour and consciousness.

For more information visit susanmidalia.com

Author talksJosephine Taylor – Eye of a Rook Thursday 21 October 10.45am – 11.45am

Eye of a Rook follows two women who develop a mystifying gynaecological disorder.

In contemporary Perth, writer and academic Alice Tennant explores the history of hysteria to make sense of her chronic pain, drawing away from her husband, Duncan, as she becomes a different, more independent person. In Victorian England, Arthur Rochdale seeks help for his wife, Emily, encountering Isaac Baker Brown and contemplating the surgeon’s radical treatment for hysterical women.

Almost 150 years might separate the two women, but Alice discovers that ignorance and dismissiveness still surround this inexplicable disorder. In narratives that uncannily echo each other, the two couples learn about the kind of love that’s needed when we suffer and discover the possibilities of creativity in times of struggle.

Josephine Taylor is a writer and editor. After developing chronic gynaecological pain in 2000, she was forced to surrender her career as a psychotherapist. Years later, research into the condition informed her prize-winning PhD thesis, an

investigative memoir. Josephine is an Associate Editor at Westerly Magazine and an Adjunct Senior Lecturer in Writing at Edith Cowan University. She teaches in literary fiction and creative non-fiction, and presents on disorder and creativity. Her writing has been anthologised and published widely. Eye of a Rook is her first novel.

For more information visit josephinetaylor.com

Pip Drysdale – The Paris AffairThursday 21 October 12.30pm – 1.30pm

Sharp, sassy and ambitious, Harper Brown has learned the hard way to trust no one and follow her instincts. When the artist she’s writing a feature about, Noah X, is implicated in the murder of his model muse, she finds herself at the centre of the police investigation. But Harper has her own plans. Not only has Noah forced her to deviate from her ruthless code of not becoming seriously involved with any man again but she is hellbent on making a name for herself by breaking the story on who the real murderer is. Her passion for true crime podcasts and hands-on research on the ways a woman might escape dangerous situations makes her a force to be reckoned with. What Harper discovers is an opaque, oh-so-very chic and deadly underbelly within the Parisian art world where nothing is at it seems.

A dark and sensual thriller, The Paris Affair pulses with the twists and turns of a Montmartre street. Once you start reading you won’t be able to put it down.

Pip grew up in Africa and Australia. At 20 she moved to New York to study acting, worked in indie films and Broadway theatre, started writing songs and made four records. After graduating with a BA in English, Pip moved to London and played shows across Europe. In 2015 she started writing books.

Previously hailed as ‘the next Liane Moriarty’, Australian author Pip Drysdale has carved out her own unique path with her debut novel The Sunday Girl and her second book, The Strangers We Know, both of which became bestsellers and caused international buzz.

To find out more about Pip, visit pipdrysdale.com

Polly Phillips – My Best Friend’s MurderThursday 21 October 1.45pm – 2.45pm

There are so many ways to kill a friendship . . .

You’re lying, sprawled at the bottom of the stairs, legs bent, arms wide. And while this could be a tragic accident, if anyone’s got a motive to hurt you, it’s me.

Bec and Izzy have been best friends their whole lives. They’ve been through a lot together – the death of Bec’s mother, the birth of Izzy’s daughter, Bec’s engagement.

But there’s a darker side to their friendship, too – and Bec is about to reach breaking point.

Then Izzy is found broken and bloodied at the bottom of the stairs.It could have been an accident – perhaps she fell – but if the police decide to look for a killer, then Bec is sure to be their prime suspect.

Polly Phillips works as a part-time journalist and author. She’s been writing since she was old enough to pick up a pen but has fortunately graduated from writing love letters to Prince William (aged 4!) to full-length novels. Originally from South London, after graduating from Cambridge University, Polly travelled and now calls Perth home.

My Best Friend’s Murder won the Montegrappa First Fiction prize at the Emirates Literal Festival in Dubai in 2019. After an auction, it was published by Simon and Schuster. Author Gytha Lodge called it ’totally gripping’ while Sophie Hannah said it ‘held me in a vice-like grip’. Inspired by a particularly toxic friendship Polly had as a teenager, the novel deals with themes of jealousy and rivalry. While nobody was harmed in the making of the book (!), Polly is no longer in contact with the friend who motivated her to write it.

Author talks

A Day of Literary Feasting will be held on 20 and 21 October in the Banksia Room at Mt Claremont

Community Centre and Library. Register for individual sessions or full days. Registrations close Friday 15 October 2021.

For more information visit nedlands.wa.gov.au/day-literary-feasting

or call Nedlands Library on 9273 3644

Presented by Nedlands Library Service, A Day of Literary Feasting offers a series of mouth-watering sessions for book lovers, aspiring writers and anyone seeking inspiration from authors and the written word. This

two-day event celebrates reading, writing and publishing featuring the following guest presenters: Annabel

Smith, Deborah Hunn, Georgia Richter, Susan Midalia, Josephine Taylor, Pip Drysdale and Polly Phillips.

Registrations are essential as places are limited. Please select either full-day registration or the sessions you are attending.

Wednesday 20 October 9.30am – 12.30pmAnnabel Smith – Writing workshop $5

12.30pm – 1.15pmLunch $5

1.15pm – 12.15pmDeborah Hunn and Georgia Richter - How to be an Author $5

Wednesday full-day registration $10

Thursday 21 October9.30am – 10.30amSusan Midalia – Everyday Madness $5

10.45am – 11.45amJosephine Taylor – Eye of a Rook $5

11.45am – 12.30pmLunch $5

12.30pm – 1.30pmPip Drysdale – The Paris Affair $5

1.45pm – 2.45pmPolly Phillips – My Best Friend’s Murder $5

Thursday full-day registration $20

Special Early Bird 2 Day Registration closesSunday 26 September 2021 $20

Registration

Total: $______________________________________________Full name: _______________________________________________Address: _______________________________________________Phone: _______________________________________________Email: _______________________________________________

Payment and registration can be made in person (cash or EFTPOS) or by phone (credit card payments) at Nedlands Library. Mt Claremont Library accepts cash only payments. Registrations close on Friday 15 October 2021.

Nedlands Library60-64 Stirling Highway Nedlands WA 6009T 9273 3644E library@nedlands.wa.gov.auW nedlands.wa.gov.au

Mt Claremont Library105 Montgomery Avenue Mt Claremont WA 6010T 9383 1462E library@nedlands.wa.gov.auW nedlands.wa.gov.au

Nedlands Library opening hoursMonday 9am – 6pmTuesday 9am – 8pmWednesday 9am – 8pmThursday 9am – 8pmFriday 9am – 6pmSaturday 9am – 1pmSunday 1pm – 5pm

Mt Claremont Library opening hoursMonday 9.30am – 7pmTuesday 9.30am – 6pmWednesday 9.30am – 6pm

Thursday 9.30am – 6pmFriday 9.30am – 6pmSaturday 9am – 12pmSunday Closed

Upon request, this brochure is available in alternative formats to people with disabilities. Printed on Australian-made 100 percent recycled paper.