WORDS, narrative and music will take precedence in April next year at Sorrento when more than 45 authors, playwrights, journalists, academics and musicians attend the inaugural Sorrento Writers’ Festival.
The four-day festival is planned by journalist, podcaster, former bookshop owner Corrie Perkin “to celebrate literature in Australia, inspire big ideas and encourage bold thinking”.
The not-for-profit event is predicted to “encourage deep thinking and compelling conversations” through meet the author events, speeches, panel discussions, a business seminar, readings, musical performances, children’s programs, and a book club.
“The Sorrento Writers Festival will be a time for open minds and open hearts. It will be a time for laughter and listening. It will be a time for debate, discussion and intellectual prodding. And it’s an opportunity to celebrate this beautiful peninsula with our local friends, and with our visitors,” Perkin said.
Perkin closed her Hawksburn bookshop after 12 years mid-last year as a result of lockdowns and fruitless rental negotiations.
Most events in next year’s writers’ festival will be held at the newly renovated Continental Sorrento.
Perkin says she saw a boom in the peninsula’s permanent and visitor populations during the COVID-19 crisis and decided the festival would provide “an additional cultural offering”.
“It’s time to hear the stories of friends from other places, to listen to their ideas, and to learn more about ourselves and the world around us via the written and spoken word,” Perkin said. “We all love stories and it is time to tell the story of our beautiful coastal region to a wider audience.
“The magnificent Sorrento and Portsea environment is the hero of our festival. Despite 150 years of visitor influx and development, it retains its natural beauty thanks to a caring and vigilant nature-loving community,” she said.
“We want our festival to celebrate this beautiful part of the world, the special ecology of the Mornington Peninsula, its ancient history and its European settler beginnings, and we want to encourage visitors to experience as much as they can during their festival visit.”
First published in the Southern Peninsula News – 23 August 2022
