May 23, 2010

Sydney Writers' Festival 2010


We have arrived home from our weekend in Sydney which delivered varied weather while we were there but fantastic bookish and friend experiences!

The Sydney Writers' Festival is held in a wonderful location on Sydney Harbour - pretty much underneath the Sydney Harbour Bridge - I snapped the photo above as we came out of our last session of the day.

Just being in amongst the atmosphere of the festival is great - I love being in a beautiful physical location where everyone around me is totally absorbed in talking about books - my idea of paradise!! I was also really lucky to be able to catch up with one of my close friends from school for lunch - a definite highlight of the weekend as although we don't get to see each other all that often we have a lot in common - including books and writing.

The highlight of the festival for me was listening to Yiyun Li speak about her new novel, The Vagrants. I had not heard of Li at all before coming to the festival - the main reason that I enjoy going to these sorts of events - I get to discover wonderful authors and books that would otherwise have passed me by. I also think that sometimes it can help to hear an author speak passionately about their work - it enables me to engage more easily with their books.

And of course I did come away with more books to add to my ever growing collection - but I will save sharing these with you until another day...

2 comments:

Tamara said...

Hi Karen, Sounds like a great weekend. In this blog you've really expressed your love of books and sydney. Thanks for introducing us to Yiyun Li. Will you be reviewing The Vagrants?

Karen said...

Hi T - I will definitely be reviewing The Vagrants eventually - you should see the pile of books I have waiting for me to read at the moment!!