“Reading is a very individual pastime, so it’s wonderful when you can go somewhere and find something that speaks to you.” Festival founder Suzanne Burdon. Shoalhaven Council came good with a grant, but the rest came from private donations and sponsors, including the Neilson Foundation.įrom the outset, Burdon was sceptical about the value of an overarching theme, believing they are usually created at the end as an afterthought. There are pluses to having a festival in the Shoalhaven region from the accommodation point of view and all the authors, she says, are being accommodated by locals.īut “billeting” is not quite the word, as some of the places where authors will be staying are gorgeous properties in rolling hills and countryside, while others will stay in motels where the local business people have given several rooms for the two nights. She took advice from people in the town, from local-region bookshops and from experts such as publishing consultant and freelance editor Mary Cunnane, who lives in the area and came on to the committee.
“Berry is such an appealing town and when I emailed potential authors, every single one said ‘we’d love to come to Berry for a festival’,” she says.
Happily, Berry turns out to have a very creative community with many local authors she didn’t know about, and many hands to help, so after a false start in covid-fraught 2021, the event is now scheduled for late October. “I thought it would be a nice, warm and cosy event for readers and authors in a lovely little village, I thought it would be very creative, but I had no idea about the scale of what was required… it’s a big deal putting on a writers’ festival, I was so naïve,” she says. When I catch up with the founder and artistic director, Suzanne Burdon, I find that organising a writers’ festival is no picnic.īurdon, herself the author of “Almost Invincible”, a biographical novel about Mary Shelley, lives in nearby Gerroa and her daughter lives in Berry. THERE’S a strong Canberra contingent among the writers heading to the inaugural Berry Writers Festival. “Berry is such an appealing town and when I emailed potential authors, every single one said ‘we’d love to come to Berry for a festival’, says artistic director Suzanne Burdon.
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