All posts tagged: byron writers festival

Paul Kelly takes on Shakespeare | Byron Writers Festival 2016

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Paul Kelly has a new album out, Seven Sonnets and a Song, a collection of William Shakespeare’s works set to music. Coincidentally, or maybe not, this year also marks 400 years since Shakespeare’s death in 1616, and we can’t stop talking about him. Paul Kelly, himself an author as well as a musician, was recently at the Byron Writers Festival to discuss the way that art can outlive the artist, and you’d hardly find a more fitting example of artistic longevity than the great playwright himself. Kelly’s love affair with Shakespeare began in 1976 when he put down a $5 deposit on a collection of the bard’s comedies and tragedies at a bookstore in Melbourne. It would eventually cost him $34, a hefty sum in those days, equivalent to around 20 percent of the average weekly wage. Kelly has made a career of collecting words and stories, including poetry, and he encourages the audience to get into reading poems, saying it doesn’t have to be difficult. “You only need one from a poet and you put it in your …

Writing as Salvation | Byron Writers Festival 2016

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The smell of menthol wafts from the sodden woodchips lying in the muddy grass. You can’t escape the wet, it’s coming up through the soles of boots, and down from the heavens. If the punters at a writers festival needed another reason to stay indoors and read books, the weather at this year’s Byron Writers Festival would’ve been a good one. Thumbs up then, to the record number of attendees at the event, adorned with raincoats and gumboots, scarves and beanies, braving the latter stages of a mighty low-pressure system hovering just off the coast. I spent a lot of the festival in volunteer mode, fundraising for the Indigenous Literacy Foundation, rattling the can and handing out brochures. It was my virgin volunteer experience, and I absolutely loved it! You should’ve seen me, smiling away, wedging myself into people’s conversations with the utmost charm and enthusiasm. The foundation has been the official charity of the festival for the past three years, and it was heartening to see so many people keen to donate their leftover …

Young Minds, Old News

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Noah Rosenberg, Marc Fennell, Erik Jensen. These guys are the smooth forehead on the fresh face of journalism in the digital age. Not yet creased by wrinkles, leaning forward in their chairs, they chatter like excited schoolboys as they discuss how they’re writing their own rules and forging ahead in the post-print era. With newsrooms short on time and traditional media outlets cutting budgets, these three storytellers have found ways to report what they think is important in ways that consumers think are engaging. Rosenberg, Fennell and Jensen were among the speakers at the recent Byron Bay Writers Festival examining the tension between old media formats like newspaper and radio, and the new platforms of social media, websites and podcasting. Can they all co-exist? Should they? In the bright, Byron Bay morning light, New York City resident, Noah Rosenberg, is in conversation with Jacqui Park, Chief Executive of the Walkley Foundation. Rosenberg is the founder of Narrative.ly, a website dedicated to telling human stories, mostly in the shape of long-form articles, but also video and …