kununurra 2-4 september kimberley writers festival kimberley writers festival is proud to embrace...

Kimberley Wr iters Fest ival

Kununurra 2-4 September

2016

Welcome to the 11th annual Kimberley Writers Festival.

We are excited to be able to combine so many celebrations of story in so many forms and extend this to include Children’s Book Week and Indigenous Literacy Day (albeit a few days early!). From 29 August until the formal Festival opening on 2nd September, children’s author Norman Jorgensen and illustrator Dub Leffler will be visiting students in Wyndham, Kununurra, Kalumburu, Warmun, Frogs Hollow and other smaller communities to share their talents and help give our students a voice to tell their own stories.

Our public program, 2-4 September brings together authors, musicians and songwriters, storytellers and illustrators from across Australia and overseas. Please join us as they share their stories and love of the written and spoken word over 3 days of extraordinary events that can only be experienced in the Kimberley.

Finalist in the 2016 “First National Kimberley Best of Kununurra 2016” Awards

Landi Bradshaw Photography

Festival TeamFestival Director Joanne Roach Festival Manager Emma Day Festival Intern Katie McAllister Event Consultant Shani Wood, SWEvents Media Consultant Janine Pittaway, Bright Communications Graphic Design Tracey Gibbs Committee Meagan Le Riche, Colleen Dupe, Elisabeth Stewart, Angie Liu, Bronwen Hughes, Kyna Cookson, Lisa MacArthur, Annie Harslett Library officers Hayley Bucktin, Samantha Tate

Ticket PricesMany events within the festival are free – please check the program for details.

Bookings eventbrite.com.au > Kimberley Writers Festival

Further information available from Kununurra Community and School Library Cr. Coolibah Drive & Mangaloo St. T: (08) 9169 1227

VenuesKununurra Community and School Library, Cr. Coolibah Drive & Mangaloo St.T: (08 ) 9169 1227

Kununurra Country Club Resort, Coolibah Drive Kununurra T: (08) 91681024

Featured Events

Festival OpeningJoin us from 7pm on Friday 2nd September for the official opening of the 2016 Kimberley Writers Festival. Enjoy a glass of wine, canapes, the delightful sound of the Kununurra String Quartet whilst mingling with friends and our special guests. Includes the launch of Norman Jorgensen’s latest book The Smugglers Curse and an introduction to this year’s guests. Free function but tickets are a must, as numbers are limited.

Storytelling and Guided Walk through Mirima ParkCome along on Sunday afternoon to Mirima National Park for Sharing Our Stories 2-3pm. Local community members will share their stories surrounded by the beauty of the ancient landscape, Kimberley rock formations and colours.

Gold coin donation to the Mirima Dawang Woorlab-Gerring Language and Culture Centre

Sunday Literary Brunch on the Ord RiverThe highlight of the Kimberley Writers Festival the Ord River Roadhouse and Triple J Tours Champagne Brunch Cruise is not to be missed. Cruise down the lower Ord River to Triple J’s Echo Point Camp for a glass of bubbles and brunch before listening to our guests read from their books and tell stories from their lives. Ah the serenity!Limited numbers tickets $80

Children’s and YA Program Many of our fabulous guests will be working with the students of the East Kimberley during the school day on Friday 2nd September. Phone the library 91691227 for details.

Public EventsFriday 2 September 2016

Time Activity/Session Venue Cost

12-2pm Literary Luncheon with Kevin Brophy & Agustinus Wibowo2 course luncheon whilst being entertained by our fabulous authors.

Kelly’s Bar and Grill; Kununurra Country Club Resort

$50

7.00 pm Official Opening – Wine, canapes, talk music and laughter. Meet our guests and learn their stories

Kununurra Community and School Library

FREE but bookings essential

Saturday 3 September 2016


9.30-11 am Children’s sessions with Norman Jorgensen (Creative writing) & Dub Leffler (Illustrating) limited numbers


FREEbut bookings essential

9.00 am On the couch – all authors Kununurra Community and School Library

FREE

9.30 am Entrance stage right – Mary Ann Butler


FREE

10.15 am An Asian OdysseyAgustinus Wibowo & Madelaine Dickie


FREE

11.00 am Out of Africa – our journeyYassmin Abdel Magied & Nkandu Beltz


FREE

Saturday 3 September 2016


11.45 am Creating a perfect matchNorman Jorgensen & Dub Leffler


FREE

12.30 LUNCH

1.15 pm A colourful lifeFaye Bohling


FREE

2.00 Dust and dingoesKevin Brophy


FREE

2.45 pm

Free for all! Ask the tough questions – All authors


FREE

Sunday 4 September 2016


8.oo am – 12 Noon

Ord River Roadhouse and Triple J Tours Champagne Bruch Cruise - All authors

Celebrity Tree Boat Ramp

$80

2.00 pm – 3.30pm

Sharing our stories Mirima National Park

Gold Coin Donation

4pm-7pm Book Picnic – official closingBring a picnic and a rug for storytime and rhymetime, craft activities, dancers, KDHS School Band, winners of the Durack Young Writers Competition announced.

Kununurra Country Club Resort Lawn

FREE

Indigenous Literacy Day, 30 AugustThe Kimberley Writers Festival is proud to embrace Indigenous Literacy Day as part of our 2016 festival. The Day is an initiative of the Indigenous Literacy Foundation which aims to spread the word about improving literacy levels, and opportunities, for Indigenous children living in some of the most remote and isolated parts of our country. For more information go to indigenousliteracyfoundation.org.au

Festival GuestsNkandu Beltz is an author, philanthropist, social change maker and lover of humanity, who has worked in the not-for-profit sector for over 15 years. She is a Young Leaders Commissioner with the G200 Association based in Geneva and an International Award-winning Social Pioneer who works with youth and women around the globe. Nkandu has written three books which are now sold in more than 10 countries. She travels the globe as a speaker and runs workshops on personal leadership and unleashing your potential. With her journalistic skills she interviews Thought Leaders that inspire people to take action.

Faye Bohling Soon after Faye Bohling’s birth, her mother chose to leave her with a foster carer. Over subsequent years she spent short fragments of time with her mother, before she was taken to live in a convent institution for ‘wayward girls’. Faye was just ten years old when she was put to work in the convent’s vast commercial laundering operation and denied an education. The Laundry Girl is the true story of a young girl’s struggle to understand her place in a constantly changing world, dispersed with heart-warming vignettes of colourful characters and experiences encountered on her life’s journey.

Professor Kevin Brophy is the author of thirteen books of poetry, fiction and essays. His latest book is Walking: New and Selected Poems (John Leonard Press). He teaches poetry and short fiction in the Creative Writing Program in the School of Culture and Communication at the University of Melbourne. His poems, fiction and essays have been anthologised in Best Australian Poems 2004, 2006, 2007, 2011, Best Australian Essays 2009 and Best Australian

Stories 2012 (Black Inc.), Australian Poetry since 1788 (UNSW Press 2011), Best Australian Essays: a ten-year collection (Black Inc. 2011), the MacQuarie PEN Anthology of Australian Literature (Allen & Unwin 2009), Australian Verse since 1788 (UNSW Press 2011), Australian Love Poems (Inkerman & Blunt 2013) and other publications. In 2009 he was awarded the Calibre Prize for an outstanding essay. He has been a recent board member of Going Down Swinging (2009-12), four times a judge for the Victorian Premiers Literary Awards, and from 2001-2008 he was a member of the Executive of the Australasian Association of Writing Programs. He has performed and read widely in Melbourne and regional Victoria.

Mary Anne Butler is a Darwin based playwright whose play Broken won the 2016 Victorian Prize for Literature, the 2016 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Drama and the 2014 NT Literary Award for Best Script. Highway of Lost Hearts premiered at the 2012 Darwin Festival with a 2013 return season by demand, a 2014 three-month Australia-wide tour and in 2015 was adapted to a four-part radio series for Radio National. Mary Anne is a 2014 Churchill

Fellow, 2015 Regional Arts Fellow and co-Artistic Director of Knock-em-Down Theatre. She’s been awarded month-long Bundanon residencies for playwriting [2016 and 2010], holds an MPhil [Creative Writing] and an MEd [Arts Education]. Her plays are published by Currency Press.

Madelaine Dickie studied Creative Arts and Journalism at the University of Wollongong. In 2011 she received a Prime Minister’s Australia Asia Endeavour Award to move to West Java, Indonesia, and complete her first novel. As part of this award, she worked with mentors at Universitas Padjadjaran and Universitas Islam Bandung. Her writing has appeared in numerous publications including the Griffith Review (2013), the American journal Creative

Nonfiction (2012) and Hecate (2010). Her first novel Troppo won the 2014 T.A.G Hungerford Award and is published this year.

Norman Jorgensen Award winning writer, Norman Jorgensen is one of WA’s most versatile writers for young people with a dozen books published, ranging from graphic novels and best-selling picture books to well-researched historical novels. Born in Broome in 1954, the eldest of four brothers, Norman became an avid reader after being given The Secret Seven by Enid Blyton at age seven. His first picture book, In Flanders Fields, illustrated by Brian Harrison-Lever and telling the story of a homesick young soldier who risks his life to rescue a robin caught in the barbed wire that separates opposing forces in World War I, won the CBCA Picture Book of the Year Award in 2003. Unlike the English and American books he read as a child, Norman is proud that his stories are almost always set in Western Australia in a landscape his readers can recognise.

Dub Leffler is a Bigambul man and is Australia’s premier Indigenous illustrator of children’s literature. Dub has worked in many fields of the Arts including: animation, film, muralism, art installation & the performing arts. He has written two books for children and illustrated over 20 publications. He has taught Illustration both here in Australia and internationally & has collaborated with the likes of Shaun Tan, Sally Morgan and Banksy. His first book, the award winning Once There Was a Boy, has garnered critical acclaim worldwide and is included in the permanent collection in The Library of Congress in Washington DC, USA and is soon to be published in Turkey -making him the first Bigambul person in the world to do so. Dub, his wife Kelly and their 3 year old daughter, Minnie, now reside on beautiful Guringai country in Horsfield Bay where he is illustrating his first title for The National Library of Australia.

Yassmin Abdel-Magied was born in Sudan and arrived in Australia with her family just before she turned two. Yassmin has forged a hybrid career as an engineer, social advocate and media commentator. At age 16, she founded Youth Without Borders, an organisation that empowers young people to realise their full potential through collaborative, community based programs. In 2015 she was named Queensland Young Australian of the Year. She sits on several

Boards including the Australian Multicultural Council, the Queensland Museum, the Design Council, ChildFund, The Council for Australian-Arab Relations (CAAR) and the domestic violence prevention organisation, Our Watch. She was Head of Media on the organising committee of the 2014 Youth G20 Summit. She is the Gender Ambassador for the Inter-American Development Bank and has represented Australia through multiple diplomatic programs across the globe. Yassmin debuted as an author at the age of 24 with her memoir, Yassmin’s Story - Who Do You Think I Am? She has also written extensively for The Guardian, The Sydney Morning Herald, AFR, The Griffith Review, and Huffington Post and has a growing TV and radio presence as a regular on Q&A and Triple J’s Hack. Yassmin is passionate about making ‘diversity’ the norm.

Agustinus Wibowo is an Indonesian travel writer and travel photographer. He started a “Grand Overland Journey” in 2005 from Beijing, where he pursued his bachelor degree in Tsinghua University, and dreamed to reach South Africa totally by land with an optimistic budget of US$2000. His journey has taken him across Himalaya, South Asia, Afghanistan, Iran, and ex-Soviet Central Asian republics. He was stranded and stayed for three years in Afghanistan, until 2009.

His first book, A Blanket of Dust (2010) chronicles his journey in Afghanistan. It was followed by Borderlines: A Journey through Central Asia (2011) and his third book, Zero (2013), he has pioneered a new genre in Indonesian travel literature. Agustinus speaks Indonesian, English and Mandarin Chinese fluently; and has learned Russian, Japanese, German and French academically; and has taught himself to speak many languages including Urdu, Farsi, Tajik, Kyrgyz, Kazakh, Uzbek, Mongol, Turkish, and Tok Pisin.

As the peak body for writing and associated activities in WA, writingWA celebrates the achievements of our literary creators, provides a range of services to support emerging practitioners, and strives to bring Western Australian writing to new audiences throughout this State and beyond.

writingWA has been pleased to provide support to the Kimberley Writers Festival since its inception in 2004. For more information about writingWA visit writingwa.org

Other Things to See and Do in Kununurra Why not make your visit to the Kimberley Writers Festival part of a bigger East Kimberley adventure?

Aboriginal history and activity in the East Kimberley dates back more than 40,000 years and the Aboriginal rock art that exists in the Kimberley region is recognised as some of the best examples of rock paintings found anywhere in the world.

The region also boasts a wide variety of environments ranging from semi desert lands, rugged ridges and coastal fringes to lush tropical micro environments. Visitors can explore the ancient beauty of the Bungle Bungle Range by air, take a cruise on Lake Argyle, explore the gorges and springs of El Questro Wilderness Park, or spend an afternoon sampling the produce at the Hoochery Distillery – the oldest operating still in Western Australia!

With a range of accommodation options to suit all tastes and purses, the East Kimberley is an ideal holiday destination.

For more information or to plan your adventures contact the friendly staff at the Kununurra Visitor Centre @ http://visitkununurra.com or T: 08 9168 1177

Thank you to our Sponsors Principal SponsorsThe Kimberley Writers Festival is proudly supported by writingWA with funding provided by the WA Departments of Culture and the Arts and Regional Development and Royalties for Regions.

Major Sponsors

kununurra 2-4 september kimberley writers festival kimberley writers festival is proud to embrace...

Documents