The renowned Byron Writers Festival takes place in August, with more than 120 authors, journalists and literary figures from Australia and around the world gathering in the Bangalow Showground to provide a weekend of dazzling ideas and inspiration to the book-loving multitudes. Taking note of the Festival’s theme for 2025 – Passion & Purpose – Digby Hildreth asked some Australian writers to share a little about a book that influenced their work as a writer or inspired them to become one; and how that experience nourished some passion and purpose in them.
Sonya Voumard
As a young journalist I read In Cold Blood by Truman Capote, a powerfully descriptive telling of the 1959 brutal murders of a farming family in Kansas. The book was regarded by many as the first non-fiction novel, a concept I found fascinating and inspiring. While I now see that In Cold Blood was deeply flawed, it sparked my interest in the idea of long-form literary journalism’s possibilities. This inspiration was further fuelled by the writings of Helen Garner, initially Monkey Grip, which, while fiction, was transparently written based on true events. Exploring and testing the intersection of life-writing and journalism would become and remain my passion and purpose as a writer.
Sonya will talk about her latest book, Tremor, on Saturday afternoon on the Coolamon stage.
Naima Brown
I’ve always found this to be one of the most difficult questions to answer…it’s like choosing a favourite child. I think I’ve been
just as impacted by the books that were read to me as a child (Goodnight Moon, Where the Wild Things Are) as I’ve been by the literature I’ve read as an adult. Ultimately it comes down to a writer’s ability to transport the reader somewhere that changes them emotionally, that leaves a mark. If I had to highlight one author it would be Barbara Kingsolver. I’ve grown up alongside her work. I remember reading Poisonwood Bible as a teenager, and Demon Copperhead just last year in my 40s: to have an author whose work has been a constant presence in my own life, and where I can track her own evolution as a writer, has been deeply inspiring and reassuring.
Naima appears three times during the festival, interviewing other novelists, and also presenting her own latest novel, Mother Tongue.
Kayte Nunn
The book that lives in my memory, resurfacing at regular intervals, is Joyce’s Dubliners. Its interconnected stories and deft characterisation have continued to resonate with me over the years since I first read it. Its exploration of inner lives and social tensions, its circular themes of isolation, paralysis and the desire to escape to a better reality have so much to offer the reader and thinker. But above all, it is Joyce’s purposeful, layered approach to the narrative that resonates with me as a writer. I love that the stories may be interpreted in a multiplicity of ways and remain intriguing decades later.
Kayte will discuss her most recent novel, The Palazzo, on Friday afternoon’s Murder Mysteries session on the Coolamon stage.