TESS BROOKS
The Brisbane Writer’s Festival (BWF) wrapped up on Monday after a week of events and talks by a talented collection of authors and illustrators.
BWF director and CEO Kate Eltham said the festival kicked off last Wednesday with ‘Word Play’, providing thousands of school children the opportunity to laugh and learn and the chance to meet their favourite authors, setting the tone for the week ahead.
“[This year] saw a few new events including the Well Drawn program which offered an increase of comics and graphic novel writers and illustrators, a move embraced by young festival goers,” Ms Eltham said.
“Across the days of the Festival, BWF Illustrator in Residence Briony Stewart created a dragon in Alphabet Zoo, we heard emotional stories from authors brave enough to commit their stories to paper, we devoured our favourite authors while discovering some new ones.
“And we bought books, lots of books!”
Nonfiction and children’s books were amongst the best selling categories of this year’s festival.
The top selling books of 2013 were:
- Tim Cope – On the Trail of Genghis Khan: an epic journey through the land of the nomads
- Kristina Olsson – Boy, lost: A Family Memoir
- Deborah Abela – Grimsdon
- James Phelan – Last Thirteen
- Robert Hoge – Ugly: My Memoir
- Matthew Condon – Three Crooked Kings
- Damon Young – Philosophy in the Garden
- Lloyd Jones – History of Silence: A Memoir
- Michael Gerard Bauer – Eric Vale, Epic Fail
- Barbara Arrowsmith-Young – The Woman Who Changed Her Brain