All lovers of words, written and spoken, will find something to interest them at the 2019 Adelaide Plains Festival of Words which will be held from 24th to 29th July. The theme for the 2019 Festival is 'Location' and programmed activities include a variety of workshops, a pop-up book shop, a train ride to Adelaide, a yarning circle, an open mike event, and plenty of eating, drinking and socialising.
'Location' is the theme for this year's Adelaide Plains Festival of Words
This year, the festival events start at 7.00 pm on the Wednesday (rather than the Thursday) night at the Prince Albert Hotel with the Official Opening by Karen Redman, Mayor of Gawler. This will be followed by Words Aloud, a presentation about the preservation of Gawler's oral history, in a project which is a satellite operation for the Gawler Community Broadcasting Association.
A 'Location, Location, Location' photographic display will be held at the Niina Marni Cafe in the Gawler Civic Centre.
Thursday's events begin with a 'Location, Location, Location' photographic display featuring images from three different photographers, Martin Christmas, John Giddens and Janette Menhennet. Come along to the Niina Marni Café in the newly renovated Civic Centre, Murray Street, Gawler, from 2.00pm to 4.00 pm, to listen to the inspiration of the images and write about the urban, rural or natural environments of the Gawler region.
Later in the afternoon join with the Adelaide Plains Chapter and Verse group at an afternoon writers' gathering at the Prince Albert Hotel in Murray Street Gawler.
The Mallala Hotel is the location for Friday afternoon's events.
Mallala is the location for Friday's events which begin with lunch at the Mallala Hotel. After lunch, participants will take a tour of the award-winning, historical Mallala Museum for creative inspiration, then return to the hotel to write about it during the afternoon.
A regular feature of previous festivals, the Wakefield Press Pop-Up Bookshop will be hosted by Michael Bollen in the Prince Albert Hotel on Saturday, 27th July. Pop in between other festival events to browse the excellent range of titles and maybe purchase something to take home and read.
The Gawler Civic Centre houses the Library and the Niina Marni Cafe, two of the Festival event locations.
The first workshop on Saturday will start at 10.00 am at the library in the Gawler Civic Centre. It will be presented by well-known sci-fi and young adult fiction writer, Sean Williams and will be about writing for young people.
The workshop will be followed from 11.30 am to 1.00 pm by the Yarning Circle which will be hosted this year by Aboriginal educator, Dale Giles, at the Niina Marni Cafe in the Gawler Civic Centre. It will be devoted to First Peoples and Australian culture and will be about Aboriginal perspectives on location and issues of reconciliation.
The Prince Albert Hotel im Murray Street, Gawler, will be the location for a number of the Festival events.
Saturday afternoon's activities will all be held in the Prince Albert Hotel. They will begin at 1.30 pm with the keynote address which will be presented by New York Times best-selling author, Sean Williams. The author of fifty books for readers of all ages and over one hundred and forty short stories, Sean is popular with readers of sci-fi and young adult fiction. He writes in a variety of genres but is most well-known for his science fiction works. He is a multiple recipient of the Aurealis and Ditmar Awards and also received the "SA Great" Literature Award in 2000 and the Peter McNamara Award for contributions to Australian speculative fiction in 2008.
At 2.15 pm, Michael Bollen from Wakefield Press will speak on publishing and this will be followed at 2.40 pm by another workshop. Adelaide author, Katie Fraser (Lowe), will be the presenter at this workshop which will be on the importance of location in writing.
The final event on Saturday will be a writers' forum on location, hosted by the Adelaide Plains Poets Inc. at 4.00 pm.
The Gawler Railway Station (centre) and Art Gallery (right).
Sunday's program features a morning 'Poetry In Motion' train ride to Adelaide and back to Gawler, an event which has proven to be very popular in previous years. Participants will meet at 9.00 am in the Art Gallery situated at the Gawler Railway Station to derive inspiration from the works of art, and will then begin their train journey at 9.58 am, returning to Gawler station at 12.00 noon.
The train from Adelalide approaching the Gawler Railway Station.
Lunch at the Prince Albert Hotel will be followed by the presentation of the winners of the Adelaide Plains Poets Poetry Competition on the subject of Location. The day and the festival will end with a two-hour session of Gawler Poets at the Pub which will include the reading of the winning poems, the five-word challenge, a book raffle and an open mike.
The 2019 Adelaide Plains Festival of Words offers a packed program for all devotees of words, but pre-booking for the events you are interested in attending is essential. Bookings can be made via the Festival of Words webpage -
www.festivalofwords.info/booking.html
For more information and details of the program and presenters, please go to the
Adelaide Plains Festival of Words website or their
Facebook page.
