The Committed Reader

This year’s Rose Scott Women Writers’ Festival (RSWWF) will celebrate the work of 21 Australian women writers across fiction and non-fiction, in print, performance and digital media.

Established in 2013 and held each spring, the RSWWF has been described as ‘one of the most significant literary festivals on Sydney’s cultural calendar’ (stella.org.au). Curated by writer and award-winning filmmaker Kathryn Millard, this year’s festival features Helen Garner in conversation with Nicole Abadee on opening night. The following day’s program features writers including Kylie Boltin, Kristen Dunphy, Nardi Simpson, Mireille Juchau, Felicity Plunkett, and Eda Gunaydin.

Maria Popova (Brain Pickings, Marginalia) says to be a committed reader is a life-changing act. Join Belinda Castles, editor of How to Read Like an Australian Writer, Roanna Gonsalves, contributor and fiction writer, and Teela Reid, Contributing Editor of _Griffith Review 76: Acts of Reckoning _as they speak with Susan Wyndham about reading and writing.

About the writers

Belinda Castles is a novelist and lecturer at the University of Sydney, and the editor of Reading Like an Australian Writer. _Her novels have won the _Australian/Vogel and Asher Literary Awards and been longlisted for the Stella Prize, and she has been named one of the Sydney Morning Herald’s Best Young Novelists.

Roanna Gonsalves is the award-winning author of The Permanent Resident (UWAP). Her four-part radio series On the tip of a billion tongues, commissioned and broadcast by ABC RN’s _Earshot _program, is a portrayal of contemporary India through its multilingual writers. She works as a lecturer in Creative Writing at UNSW Sydney.

Teela Reid is a proud Wiradjuri and Wailwan woman, a senior solicitor at Chalk & Behrendt and the inaugural First Nations Lawyer in Residence at the University of Sydney Law School. She is the co-founder of @blackfulla_bookclub, a platform that honours First Nations ancestors as the original storytellers. In 2022, Teela was Contributing Editor of Griffith Review 76: Acts of Reckoning.

Susan Wyndham is a journalist and former literary editor of The Sydney Morning Herald. She is the author of Life in His Hands: the true story of a neurosurgeon and a pianist, editor of My Mother, My Father: on losing a parent, and a contributor to several other anthologies.