I’m really looking forward to celebrating the 40th Anniversary of Fremantle Press at the Great Big Book Club High Tea. It’s going to be a terrific afternoon of celebrations at The Fremantle Esplanade on Sunday 16th October. For me it’s a chance to catch up with fellow writers whom I haven’t seen for ages, and hopefully to meet lots of readers.
The Big Book Club event is already sold old, but there is another terrific event in store a few weeks later on Wednesday 2nd November. It’s the celebration to announce the winner of the 2016 City of Fremantle TAG Hungerford Award. The award celebrates the life and work of much loved WA writer, the late Tom Hungerford, with a prize of $12,000 and a publishing contract with Fremantle Press.
I am pleased to be doing a reading along with other Fremantle Press authors such as Kim Scott, Dennis Haskell, Ambelin Kwaymullina, Craig Silvey, Stephen Kinnane, Sabrina Hahn and James Foley. Throw in some music by Dave Warner and Anna Gare and the Jam Tarts and it’s likely to be a wonderful event! This is almost fully booked as well so you will need to move fast if you are interested.
I’m not surprised that so many people want to come along to celebrate this anniversary. The Press does really valuable work in discovering and publishing new and talented Western Australian writers, as well as continuing to publish some of us who have been around for years. And it’s been a crucial starting point for so many of WA’s finest writers: Elizabeth Jolley, Joan London, Gail Jones, Kim Scott, Craig Silvey, Diane Wolfer, and many more. Fremantle Press is a treasured feature on the WA cultural landscape and is known for the quality of its publishing throughout Australia and internationally. They are also great people to work with.
My own association with the Press goes back to the year 2000 when they published my memoir Remember Me, and last year In Love and War: Nursing Heroes, and Purple Prose, an anthology of women’s writing about the colour purple, which I edited with my friend and colleague, Rachel Robertson.
Tickets for the Hungerford Award Celebration are free – just book by following this link.
Liz Byrski 