The Festival train has left the station!
The Word Play fun continued today at the State Library of Queensland. Hundreds of junior bookworms met their literary heroes and received writing tips from the very best in the biz.
International superstars David Levithan and Meg Rosoff inspired long-time fans (some of whom may or may not be artists appearing later this week!)
David Astle encouraged his audiences to embrace their inner ‘word nerd’ and have fun with language.
Michael Gerard Bauer has his crowd in stitches telling his stories about Maggles, and the ways she was created.
Tristan Bancks wowed the crowds, with one of our volunteers describing his session as a hybrid between a stand-up comedy show, a TED talk, and a Gordon-Gekko-esque stockholders meeting – oozing with charisma and in complete control.
Look, we had some major highlights today. But let’s be honest, our bevy of literary greats were upstaged by our cuddly Burrawong friend. Grug was mobbed as he made his way through the SLQ forecourt.
Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk will soon be arriving to officially open the Brisbane Writers Festival, closely followed by tonight’s main event – the brilliant Lionel Shriver’s opening oration. We can’t wait to hear the truth bombs explode tonight in the Festival tent. Follow along on live on twitter with the hashtag #bwf16.
There’s still time for you to join the BWF party! You can book online, by phone, or in person at the peachy Festival box office during festival hours.
Here is today’s Daily Dozen, a round-up of upcoming events that we think you’ll love and that, amazingly, still have tickets available! Have at it.
1. Tomorrow brings a full day of FREE programming at UQ’s St Lucia campus with some of our headlining artists. Tickets to these events flew out the door, but be quick! There’s still a few spots left to see Human Rights Press Award winning journalist David Bandurski and ex-Twitter media executive Kirstine Stewart. Jump on it!
2. Fearless storyteller Maxine Beneba Clarke’s latest work The Hate Race points to some ugly and uncomfortable truths about racism in modern Australia. Join her for an important conversation.
3. Prepare to be seduced by the beauty of artist Josh Yeldham’s work, drawing on his reverential love of nature. His stunning book Surrender, dedicated to his young daughter, merges narrative and myth, imagination and real experience.
4. David Levithan is kind of a big deal in the international YA fiction scene. Meet him in the flesh and snap a selfie.
5. What is today’s pressure cooker school environment doing to our children? After her daughter was labelled a ‘failure’, investigative journalist Lucy Clark declared the system ‘broken’. A must for all parents.
6. Jeremy Gavron’s stirring memoir A Woman On The Edge of Time reveals his private journey to get to know his mother, who’s short life followed a similar tragic path to Sylvia Plath. Bring tissues.
7. Graeme Innes has overcome discrimination. Hear him discuss his enlightening memoir Finding a Way.
8. Professor Larissa Behrendt will be presenting some important information in the third of our Good Thinking Lecture series on Sunday.
9. Escape with award-winning author Chris Cleave for a discussion about long-distance love.
10. Good daughters hold their tongues, obey their elders and let their families determine their destiny. But there are only Rebellious Daughters here!
11. Creepy children. Stalkers. Con artists. Murderers. No one shares the stories of these dark folk quite like Justine Larbalestier, Caroline Overington and Caroline Kepnes.
12. If you’re intrigued by the darkness, you won’t want to miss our panel on Crime and Curiosity, where Kate Kyriacou, Mark Tedeschi and Emily Maguire investigate why we love to play detective.