Alison Reynolds

I’m back from a wonderful time at the Gold Coast Writers Festival. Thank you Julie Boyd, Kathy Stewart  and all the other volunteers for making it such a relaxed, inspiring event.

I visited the fabulous Surfers Paradise School, which is actually a bit inland and sited on the exotically named Isle of Capri. Principal Gary Ivory and his staff made us all very welcome. The children were very smart and interested. I learned not to ask who had a pet rabbit, because they are banned in Qld. I also learned that it’s harder to run a quiz when one bright student has not only read the Ranger in Danger books, but remembers them.

The panel on Writing for Children with Angela Sunde, Michelle Worthington and Pamela Rushby was a lot of fun. We all sat down at a long table and realized that there was only one mike on a cord that couldn’t stretch down to all of us. So we move our chairs closer and squeeze together. That’s when the tech support rushes on and tells us what looks like pencil cases actually are portable mike cases. Whoops.  I thought the organizers had supplied us with pencils in case our pens ran out.

There were more inspirational sessions including one by Tim Ferguson about comedy. While I’m sure that you prob. can analyse every piece of comedy into categories, I’m not convinced that people can be taught to write funny. I think you need a bit of innate spark.

The lunch on the Sunday was super fun. (You are probably getting the gist that a fun time was had by all.) I was at a great table and a special thank you to Vacen Taylor and William for telling me ghost stories that I remembered that night when I was trying to go to sleep. Jill Murray the guest speaker was fascinating. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but she’s got me going out there to get her biography. There’s much more to her than merely being a political spouse.

Thank you again Gold Coast Writers Festival!