Tag: festival

Top 5 Clunes Booktown Festival Moments

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Clunes Booktown Festival is an annual celebration of Australian literature, authors, and industry professionals. Overnight, the town is transformed into an outdoor library, with bookstores, nicknacks, and homemade sweets lining the streets. We’re so excited to be back here for the second year in a row. We’ve already had a spectacular start to the weekend.

Although there have been many highlights so far, here is our top five from today!

1. Clunes Booktown Atmosphere

Nestled in the Victorian countryside, Clunes is a gorgeous little historical town situated in the Central Goldfield region — only about two hours out of Melbourne. As we descended down from the hills, it was like entering another world cast in the golden and bronze hues of autumn. Streets are lined with oak trees, brick buildings and the busy hum of morning chatter. The chilly air was scented with freshly baked goods, old books and strong coffee. There was a sense of wonder rippling through the crowd. What more could you ask for?

2. Panel One: Reading to Escape, Or Face, Reality

One of our absolute highlights was visiting the Free Lending Library, where we got to listen to Gabrielle Wang, Jack Henseleit, Nicole Hayes and Danielle Binks. All of these amazing industry professionals had so much knowledge to share about whether we read to escape, or face, reality. They also talked about the need for better representation, authenticity, and the moral obligation authors hold.Read More »

Q&A with Nicole Hayes | Clunes Booktown Festival

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We’re so excited to be heading off to Clunes Booktown Festival next weekend! We had an absolutely spectacular time last year, and we can’t wait to see more brilliant panels, grab some books, and soak up the lovely literary atmosphere.

Today we have a very exciting interview with Nicole Hayes to share with you! Nicole will be appearing at the Clunes Booktown Festival on the Reading to Escape, or Face, Reality panel and the Play Like a Girl panel. We’re so looking forward to both of them!

We can’t wait to see you this year at the Clunes Booktown Festival! Which other authors are you most looking forward to seeing?

Thank you! I’m chuffed to be invited.

Re who I’d like to see, there are so many! I’m on panels with some of my favourites including Alicia Sometimes, Danielle Binks, Kate O’Halloran, and Gabrielle Wang but I’m determined to catch the panel with Alice Pung and Tony Birch, plus Tony and Paddy O-Reilly are talking about short story writing. I need all the help I can get there! Sarah Epstein will be presenting, too, which I don’t want to miss. I’m also really excited about seeing some writers and storytellers whose work I’m not as familiar with. I’m basically going to wander from event to event the whole weekend, and try not to make a nuisance of myself.Read More »

Clunes Booktown Festival | Wrap Up

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It’s been a lifelong dream to finally make our way to the wonderful town of Clunes. Clunes history is engrained with the complete and utter love for books, so much in fact that it’s nicknames Clunes Booktown.

Every year they host a two day event expressing their love for reading, writing and all things bookish – and we finally got an invite! So off we went on Friday night, to make our way to our dream town. Despite our haunted AirBnB, we arrived safe and sound and prepared ourselves for our panel filled weekend.

Clunes is absolutely stunning, as you can tell from the photos – and we loved every single moment there. Once we arrived we headed straight to the Clunes Town Hall to see Zana Frallion, Jaclyn Moriarty and Ellie Marney for their open discussion Exploring the Teen Reading Culture. Through out the panel they all spoke about the people who encouraged their love for reading.

“I never remember my parents saying that we must read.” – Jaclyn Moriarty

They also spoke about the importance of having engaging reading texts for teenagers to study in high school, and about the difficulties they’ve faced when trying to recommend books for a high school booklist, even though they have relevant and important themes worth studying, and having writing that keeps a reader intrigued and engaged.Read More »

Clunes Booktown Festival 2018

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This weekend, we’re lucky enough to be attending the Clunes Booktown Festival! Clunes is a small town in regional Victoria near Ballarat, and it’s decked out in bookshops and everything bookish. We’re super excited to be going up to Clunes for the weekend to attend panels of all kinds, meet some awesome Aussie authors, and buy some books.

There’s nothing we love more than book events, so a weekend full of them is all we could ever have asked for. We haven’t been to Clunes before, so we’re excited to explore the area and become fully immersed in the literary atmosphere. We’ll be vlogging the weekend and sharing heaps of photos on social media, so make sure you’re following us so you can experience Clunes with us.

We’re thrilled to share three Q&As with some of the #LoveOzYA authors we’re most excited to see – Jaclyn Moriarty, Ellie Marney, and Zana Fraillon! These authors will be appearing on multiple panels over the weekend, so make sure you check out the schedule if you’re keen on attending. Tickets are still available!

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Jaclyn Moriarty

Besides your appearance at the Clunes Booktown Festival, what would your dream panel look like – assuming you can pick up any author from any time period in your TARDIS?

I love this question!  Jane Austen, Mary Shelley, Percy Shelley (so I can see the interaction between the two of them), Byron (similar reason, although this is risky as I think that Mary, Percy and Byron would dominate the panel, so I need some strong personalities now to balance them), Mark Twain, Emily Dickinson, Virginia Woolf, Diana Wynne Jones, Ralph Ellison, Jackie French, Sally Gardner, Roxane Gay, Liane Moriarty, Nicola Moriarty (because I love being on panels with my sisters), the Bronte family, Christopher Marlowe (so that we can solve the mystery of his death and find out whether he actually wrote any of Shakespeare’s plays, and because he will be so grateful to be asked along instead of Shakespeare for once).

We are going to need a lot of microphones. Read More »