Victoria Plains Community Newsletter

Shire of Victoria Plains

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Like its predecessors the third New Norcia Writers Festival emphasis is still on

literature as performance, with author readings accompanying each session. But

this time there is an even stronger focus on the history and practice of West

Australian Wheatbelt literature, leavened by humorous observations on ageing, spirituality and the

struggle to get words down on the page. We pick up the trails left by previous NNWF authors like Bernard

Rooney, John Kinsella and Stephen Scourfield, who have all written so eloquently about the Wheatbelt and

its inhabitants. Stephen Scourfield returns, again accompanied by Will Yeoman on guitar, to counterpoint

the rural England of his youth with sharply observed accounts of “learning” rural WA “from the bottom

up”. In another geographic and cultural counterpoint, Nicole Sinclair talks about and reads from her debut

novel Bloodlines, in which the WA Wheatbelt of 31-year-old Beth’s childhood and the story of her parents

is contrasted with her new life on an Island in Papua New Guinea.

UWA academic Tony Hughes-D’Aeth’s Like Nothing on this Earth: a Literary History of the Wheatbelt, a

monumental and unprecedented study of WA Wheatbelt literature, is more like a symphony, telling the

story of the Wheatbelt through the words of some of our finest authors from Albert Facey to John Kinsella.

By contrast, acclaimed WA author and Zen student Brigid Lowry offers her witty observations on what it

means to be an ageing woman in today’s society and how best to live, love and write.

As usual we will be utilising the beautiful spaces around the town to host the sessions, this year we are

hoping to use the glorious Spanish Chapel which was renovated as a Friends Project in 2012. Ticket

holders will also have access to the

Aboriginal cultural display

and the Abbey Press and Dom Robert Nixon

is going to provide a musical interlude. It promises to be a very special day.

For more information and ticket purchases go to the Events page on the website or contact Lucy Nicholson