What a crazy few weeks it's been!

I'm very bad at blog post titles, and this one is dull but functional. Because it has indeed been a crazy few weeks. As many of you will know, I had an insanely busy (but wonderful!) Sydney Writers' Festival this year. As always, it kicked off officially with the Premier's Literary Awards dinner, which I always attend (only two missed since my first stint as a judge in 1995) but especially this year because I was one of the three judges on the Ethel Turner Prize (young adult literature). There turned out to be a few other excellent reasons to be there this year, not least of all because it's so much fun and I get to see "my people"!

It was a different dinner this year, because the winners didn't know in advance. I wasn't thrilled with that decision—it's not the Oscars, and people might want to bring along family members if they know they are going to win (tickets are expensive!). And most people didn't prepare speeches (writers are superstitious folk!), which was as I expected. But despite all that, it was a fantastic evening—at the Opera House this year, gorgeous venue (but small) and I just wish I got the chance to spend more time with people.

My good friend Dr Anita Heiss gave the speech (which you can download here)—it was equal parts wise and witty and fabulous, much like Anita herself. Do read her speech—it's just a shame you won't get Anita's delivery!

The other reasons I was thrilled to be there were that my colleagues at Blacktown Arts Centre were honoured with a shortlisting (in the Community Relations Commission Award) for the play My Name Is Sud that was developed and produced at the Centre with members of the Sudanese community. The play didn't win, but it was an enormous honour, and the young people who wrote the play with the South African director and writer (and now my good friend and once upon a time student!) Robert Colman were able to be at the dinner. Robert actually came back from South Africa for the evening, which is an indication of what a significant moment this was for everyone involved.

The other reason was that the CAL Western Sydney Writers' Fellowships were announced at the dinner. These are the Fellowships that the Cultural Fund of the Copyright Agency Limited are funding and  my day job project is delivering. The three Fellows were also at the dinner: Alli Sebastian Wolf, Vanessa Berry and Majok Tulba. I'm in the process of setting up planning sessions with these guys to develop the workshop component of their Fellowship. Each of them will be working with young people in western Sydney as part of their Fellowship. It's such an exciting development for the project—which actually got quite a few mentions at the PLA dinner, as it turns out.

And that was largely down to Libby Gleeson, who was awarded that night with the Special Award which in this case was for a body of work that includes not only Libby's writing, but her years of advocacy and support for the writing community. (I can't seem to find the citation, alas.) Libby didn't know she was receiving this award, and I can tell you, it was a long four months for me, not being able to tell her. Libby is not just a good friend of mine, she is the Chair of the Advisory Group to the day-job project, and Libby spoke warmly of the satisfaction the project gives her and announced our new name—WestWords. Do you like it? We like it! And lots of other people seem to like it too.

So here is a photo stolen from the PLA website of the new Premier (who made some rather startling statements about his enjoyment of literary experiences at the dinner!) and the new arts minister (who expressed genuine enthusiasm for his portfolio). The CAL Fellows are there (1st, 3rd and 4th on the left), as is Libby in the stripey jacket, along with Patricia Wrightson Prize (children's books) winner Sophie Masson (The Hunt for Ned Kelly) in the white jacket in the middle, and the lovely Cath Crowley peeking out with the curls, 2nd from the right. Cath, of course, won the Ethel Turner with her wonderful novel Graffiti Moon. And a shout-out also to Debra Oswald, writer of terrific teen fiction, who won the Script Award for the pilot of TV show Offspring (two to the right of Libby). (Great interview with Debra here.)

And all of that was before the Festival even began!

Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, I was MCing the Festival's school days at Parramatta and Penrith. Those days are the best fun, and I love introducing the speakers, and getting out amongst the kids at lunchtime and after the end of the day, talking to them and their teachers about the event. The big name this year was Cassandra Clare—rock star!—but the local writers (and Bernard Beckett, who almost counts as local, being from New Zealand) were terrific and really well-received too. (By the way, listen to this interview with Bernard on ABC Radio National's Book Show; he says some fantastic things about why he unapologetically writes for teen readers.)

Friday I chaired a panel with UK author Anna Perera and Penguin UK publisher Amanda Punter (I'm going to run out of adjectives to describe all the utterly delightful people I saw and worked with during SWF). The panel was called "When is a Children's Book  Not a Children' Book", which was actually about the YA/adult cross-over novel, but given the title, I also brought in the question of Whither the Children's Book in a world when YA and the cross-over gets all the attention. To b honest, I felt like this was kind of an old discussion, the whole YA/adult crossover thing, but then it clearly wasn't for the audience, and it seemed to go really well. People in the audience of the panel certainly seemed to enjoy it, and I got nice feedback from friends and colleagues in attendance. This session was recorded and will, I understand, be broadcast at some point on ABC Radio National's The Book Show.

I also did a one-on-one with Anna Perera on the Sunday morning. If you haven't read Anna's books Guantanamo Boy and The Glass Collector, I really recommend them—they deal with young men in very difficult circumstances with grace, intelligence and compassion. We talked about research, creating characters, finding voice and making hard decisions for your story. I really enjoyed the session, as did Anna—and so, I am told, the audience. And what a lovely woman Anna is. It was lovely to get to know her.

And as lovely as it was to meet Anna, I was beyond thrilled to meet Kristin Cashore, with whom I also did a one-on-one In Conversation. Kristin and I have been corresponding for a few years, since I first wrote to tell her how much I loved her first novel Graceling (and subsequently Fire). And not just me, but the nieces I gave it to. One of those nieces came along to hear the In Conversation, which happened when Kristin told me she was coming to Australia for a holiday and would be in Sydney the week of SWF. (I'm not THAT influential, but I guess my enthusiasm for Kristin and her books was clear to Festival Director Chip Rolley, who agreed to add her to the program on my recommendation.) Anyway, it was so amazing to meet her at last and we had such a lovely chat. And my niece Lucy did indeed come all the way up from Canberra to hear the session, with her dad, my brother David. It's actually the first time any of my family have heard me do a session like this, I think, so that was a treat for me too (although nervous making!). Lucy is in Year 12 and is doing Honours English, which requires her to attend literary events of some description or the other. She got Kristin to sign her program for evidence.

Again, Kristin and I had a terrific chat about her amazing fantasies. A friend in the audience recorded it for me (I couldn't find my iPhone, damn things are so skinny), and I hope she'll be able to get the audio to me. Apparently it's quiet but clearly audible. I'll put it up on one of those sound cloud thingys if so. Anyway, after that, David, Lucy, Kristin and I had lunch, and I managed to get this perfect shot of Kristin and Lucy on the iPhone, which I eventually found in the pocket of my book bag...

But wait! I wasn't done yet! One more session—a panel on children and writing, put together to lead into the launch of the Sydney Story Factory. This one was chaired by Catherine Keenan, Sydney Morning Herald journalist and founder of the Sydney Story Factory, and featured Markus Zusak, Robyn Ewing (Sydney University and me fellow PLA judge) and me. Robyn and I got in a few jabs about the way the curriculum and preparation for tests such as NAPLAN have side-lined creativity and the teaching of narrative writing in schools, even to the point that they are now using extra-curricula programs such as creative writing competitions as NAPLAN preparation. Depressing. But the session was good. The whole Festival was good. Maybe my favourite week of the year.

Something else pretty exciting happened as part of Sydney Writers' Festival this year. Back in April, during Youth Week, I was working on a poetry slam event for the Day Job. In partnership with Miles Merrill and his spoken word company Word Travels, we had initially planned to offer workshops to teens on weekends leading up to The Rumble—Blacktown's first poetry slam event at Blacktown Arts Centre. Unfortunately, we couldn't get kids to come to two consecutive weekend workshops, so we ended up going into Rooty Hill High School to work with their drama students. This is such a great school, with a strong creative arts program, and the kids and their drama teacher, Angelica, were amazing. About 5 of them ended up performing at The Rumble, and then with the encouragement of Miles and the Word Travels team, three of them came into town and performed at the Word Travels industry showcase on the Wednesday night prior to the Festival proper.

But that wasn't the least of it. These amazing young people came back on the Saturday night to the hugely popular spoken word event that Miles organises for the Festival every year—only initially intending to be in the audience—but they ended up performing in front of around 400 people. Apparently they were brilliant. Ack! I wasn't there! I'd had such a week—out every night, on Festival duty every day, and with a full Sunday ahead of me, I just couldn't face the drive back into town. (Remember, I live in the sticks now.) But Sumayyah, Imraan and Gavin, whose photo I can't publish here for obvious reasons—you are awesome. I'm glad you got to meet The Chaser team. I'm so proud of you, and I wish I'd been there.

And lest anyway be in any doubt—this was huge. Huge for these kids to have the opportunity to perform their own poetry at Sydney Writers' Festival. It might be the most exciting thing that's come out of my project to date. And we will be working with these guys and Rooty Hill HS again. So stay posted on that.

Oh! But! Speaking of extraordinary and exciting experiences... Also during SWF—and also something I didn't get to, because I was at Parramatta for the School Day, get this—seriously, this is also huge—writers shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers' Prize went out to Penrith High School, a selective high school with some very bright and talented students indeed. These writers at the top of their game ran workshops with students at the school—an unbelievable opportunity for these kids. And again, it was as a direct result of our project (WestWords, remember?) being out there making things happen for young reader and writers in western Sydney.

So that was Sydney Writers' Festival. Told you it was big. And while all of that was going on, my wonderful manager Jenny and my colleague Jodie and I were working on a HUGE funding application for WestWords. And then Jodie and I—while the funding application was still under way—headed down to Melbourne for the biennial Reading Matters conference.

I can't blog the whole thing here—if you were following it on Twitter (#rm11) you'll have got a flavour. This year's program is here, and if you google it, you'll also find quite a lot of blog posts like this one. My panel, on the Saturday, was on violence in YA fiction, and featured Denis Wright (NZ), author of Violence 101, Jane (JC) Burke (Pig Boy) and Kirsty Eagar (Raw Blue, Saltwater Vampires). Again, it was a really interesting discussion, and I believe it was recorded and will be on the Centre for Youth Literature website soon.

Highlights for me of Reading Matters: Ursula Dubosarsky talking about The Golden Day; Oliver Phommavanh on his scooter; Markus Zusak reading from his forth-coming novel; Kate Burridge on the history of taboo language; the panel on book covers and meeting the utterly gorgeous and delightful Brenton McKenna, creator of the indigenous graphic novel Ubby's Underdogs (Magabala Books). (Dinner at Sahara was pretty awesome too. As was my hotel—see the pic of the view following!)

And then back home to two cats who seemed to have barely missed me, and to that funding application. Which is now done, and submitted—phew!

So yes, a crazy few weeks, but crazy good. Festival season, hanging out with the gang, over for another year. And with the current funding submission in, I'm back to programming work. And that's a big yay.

I hope this wasn't too prosaic a post. Here's a photo of me and Anita and Libby from the Premier's to brighten things up!