Blown Away by Books is a festival of books, authors, publishers, panel discussions and more.
It is hosted by Fish Hoek Library and organised by Friends of Fish Hoek Library in the month of March.
Wednesday 11 March
09.00 – 12.00 A Creative Writing Workshop
with Máire Fisher. Please book at the library desk or by phone (021 400 7101).
17.00 – 18.30 Getting to the heart (and the dark underbelly) of it all
Journalists Adriaan Basson (Blessed by Bosasa: Inside Gavin Watson’s State Capture Cult) and Pieter du Toit (The Stellenbosch Mafia: Inside the Billionaires’ Club) and Caryn Dolley (The Enforcers: Inside Cape Town’s Deadly Nightclub Battles) talk to award-winning author, columnist and documentary filmmaker Max du Preez about getting inside a story.
19.00 – 20.30 High Crimes and Misdemeanours
Mike Nicol (Sleeper), Anneleigh Jacobsen (Corporation Games) and Tanya Farber (Blood on her hands: South Africa’s most notorious female killers) in conversation with Izak de Vries about writing crime – both disturbingly fictional and chillingly true.
Thursday 12 March
14.00 – 15.30 “Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy?”
Toby Bennett (The Music Box), Masha du Toit (The Linked Worlds” Series), Nerine Dorman (Sing Down the Stars) and Tallulah van der Made (Keyflame) discuss writing speculative fiction for Young and New Adults.
16.00 – 17.30 All those writing hats
Diane Awerbuck, Alex Latimer, Dorothy Dyer and Ros Haden in conversation about the diverse range of their writing. As well as managing Cover2Cover, Face2Face and Fundza’s mobi reading site (getting a nation of young people reading), Dorothy and Ros write historical fiction, YA novels and picture books for children. Diane Awerbuck and Alex Latimer imagine dystopian worlds when they write collaboratively as Frank Owen (North and South). Their other writing includes short stories and books for readers as young as three. This begs the question: who do we become when we don our writing hats?
18:00 – 18.45 Open Mic Poetry
We supply the platform – you supply the poetry. Put your name down for a 4-minute slot (first come, first served), or simply come along and listen to local poets. Presented by Karen and Paul Kilfoil, Fish Hoek Scribblers.
19.00 -20.30 Living a life of words
Drs Helen Moffett (Charlotte) and Karina Szczurek (The Fifth Mrs Brink; You Make Me Possible) chat to each about where their lives of words have taken them. From novel writing to editing, writing reviews to writing poetry, from starting a small publishing press to being published, being an environmental warrior to writing life story and memoir – the stories are endless!
Friday 13 March
15.00 – 16.30 Getting the ball rolling
Barry Cohen (Blazing the Trail – Celebrating 90 years of Black Golf in Southern Africa) and Luke Alfred (Vuvuzela Dawn – 25 Sports Stories That Shaped a New Nation) cover a wide range of sporting topics
17.00 – 18.30 Walking through different worlds
Elleke Boehmer (To the Volcano), Professor of World Literature in English at the University of Oxford, and a Professorial Governing Body Fellow at Wolfson College, talks to author, journalist and editor, Joanne Hichens, about her collection of short stories. “Boehmer’s book is a gift of discovery for us all, whether we come from the South or the North, a reminder of the transformative power of acceptance — acceptance of cultural and geographical differences, and, most of all, acceptance of our roots, wherever they may be.” Los Angeles Review of Books, January 2020.
19.00 – 20.30 Writing the past, the present and the future
Novelists Finuala Dowling (OK OK OK), Mark Winkler (Theo and Flora) and Tracey Farren (The Book of Malachi) talk to writer, editor, author and playwright Kate Sidley about how their characters are shaped by the worlds in which they live.
Saturday 14 March
10:00 – 11:30 Writing the Environment: Where fact meets fiction
Novelists Lynton Burger(She Down There) and Melissa Volker (Shadow Flicker) and environmentalists Colin Bell (The Last Elephants) and Richard Peirce (‘Cuddle Me, Kill Me’; Orca: The day the Great White sharks disappeared) talk to Robin Adams of World Wide Fund for Nature about telling stories that need to be written about our world.
12:00 – 13:30 Memoir and Life Story
“A memoir forces me to stop and remember carefully. It is an exercise in truth.” ~ Isabel Allende. Writer and editor, Sonwabiso Ngcowa, talks to Julia Martin (The Blackridge House), Martinique Stilwell (Thinking up a Hurricane), Sylvia Walker (Dealing in Death: Ellen Pakkies and a Community’s Struggle with Tik – Life Story) and, we hope, Brent Meersman (A Childhood Made Up: Living with my mother’s madness) about stopping, remembering and writing carefully and truthfully.
14.00 – 15.30 This Writing Life
Tracey Farren asks novelists Dawn Garisch (Breaking Milk), Qarnita Loxton (Being Shelley) and Trevor Sacks (Lucky Packet) where their stories come from. Do they arrive fully formed, or do uncontrollable characters dictate what will happen next? How do they write and when and why, and can anyone ever fully explain this writing life?
16.30 – 18.00 Memoir
“Life is just so painful and messy and hard and worth it and all that stuff.” ~ Robert Downey, Jr. Landa Mabenge (Becoming Him) Desiree-Anne Martin (We don’t talk about it. Ever.) and Tracy Going (Brutal Legacy) in conversation with Cathy Park about writing their lives: the painful, the messy, the hard and the worth it.
19.00 – 20.30 Current Affairs: Shining a Light
Judge Dennis Davis (Lawfare: Judging Politics in South Africa), Jonathan Ancer (Betrayal: The Secret Lives of Apartheid Spies) and James-Brent Styan (The Bosasa Billions: How the ANC sold its soul) talk to novelist and Daily Maverick contributor, Steven Boykey Sidley, about Law, Politics and Betrayals – both past and present.
Books will be on sale at a pop-up book stall. R15.00 for tea and filter coffee
*Despite all efforts to the contrary, details may change before the final date
CONTACT:
www.facebook.com/BlownAwayByBooks
