Word for Word: Bringing the World to Geelong

A world-class line-up of authors, writers and personalities will feature at the fourth annual Word for Word National Non-Fiction Festival on 17-19 November at the Geelong Library & Heritage Centre.

The announcement that internationally-acclaimed Australian author Peter Carey will open the festival has elicited an enormous response with his session selling out very quickly. Carey, who was raised in Bacchus Marsh and educated at Geelong Grammar, will be returning to his roots in Geelong as one of only a handful of Australian appearances promoting his new book A Long Way From Home.

Festival goers needn’t worry if they have missed out on tickets to the Peter Carey session as there are many other high profile personalities and authors gathering for this year’s event.
Limited tickets are still available to see Jelena Dokic, Peter FitzSimons, Julian Burnside QC, Tracey Spicer, John Safran, Frank Moorhouse, Tim Flannery, Alice Pung, Benjamin Law and Susan Carland among many others. With 80 presenters appearing at 44 events over the festival weekend, there is definitely something for everyone!

Topical panel discussions including politics, death and dying, history, climate change, feminism and faith are proving enormously popular, leading organisers to urge people not to leave their bookings to the last minute.

“Word for Word is bringing the international literary world to Geelong,” said Word for Word Festival Advisory Committee Chair Cr Margot Smith.

“The Festival has been building momentum since it began in 2014 and has really hit its stride this year and established Geelong as a significant place in the literary world.”

Festival Chair, Cr Margot Smith, says that festival goers are looking forward to a new stream with song writing featuring for the first time in 2017 as well as a special salon session with two of Australia’s most talented songwriters and musicians, Rob Snarski and Charles Jenkins.

Word for Word is the only writers’ festival dedicated to celebrating non-fiction writing in all facets and forms. This year the festival invites audiences to “go beneath the surface” to explore the intersection between fiction and non-fiction.

“This year we have a number of fiction writers that walk the fine line between fiction and non-fiction,” said Cr Smith.

Those who loved the inaugural Great Debate at last year’s festival will be delighted to hear that it is back with this year’s topic being ‘Fiction is just a fancy word for lying’.

In 2016, over 4000 people visited the Geelong Library & Heritage Centre over the festival weekend and current bookings indicate an even bigger turn-out for the 2017 event.

For a full program and to book tickets visit www.wordforwordfestival.com.au