It won’t come as a surprise that the words “ Berry Writers Festival” in the Subject line of emails sent to prospective participants elicit the enthusiastic – indeed, excited—responses: “Berry! Of course I’ll come!”
Elsewhere on this site are the names of some of the authors who’ve already agreed to appear.
Two of them are:
Phillipa McGuinness, a former publisher, is currently editor of Open Book, the magazine of the State Library of New South Wales. She is also the author of two fascinating works of non-fiction, The Year Everything Changed: 2001, which was shortlisted for the Queensland Literary Awards and the Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature and the just-published Skin Deep: The Inside Story of Our Outer Selves, which has just been reviewed rapturously in the Guardian .
Jane Caro, the noted speaker, writer, and social commentator whom many of you will have seen on The Drum, has just made her adult fiction debut with The Mother, a “gripping thriller” as described in this enthusiastic recent review.
Finally, Doris Lessing, the acclaimed British writer and the 2007 Nobel Laureate in Literature, is not appearing at the Festival, as she died alas in 2013.
But she wrote one of my favourite books, On Cats. https://www.theexaminedlife.org/library/on-cats/
In her honour, here is a picture of a Siamese named Zoe offering a bit of distracted and distracting assistance during our Festival programming effort this afternoon.
Mary Cunnane
