Page Parlour
The Emerging Writers’ Festival hosts an event called Page Parlour, which is a market place for small independent press and self-publishers. I wandered through Page Parlour in 2011 and this year I had a stall. It was a really fascinating experience and I went home with a hot-off-the-press comic by Matt Nicholls and Lee Taylor, a book of poems by Claire Jansen who has established the Tasmanian publishing house Fire Door Press, some quirky zines, a mook (which is a cross between a book and a magazine) and some other small, non-mainstream publications.
Last night I sat in bed and read a zine – a letter from someone called Luke about his experience of drawing a female model in a life drawing class. The letter was addressed to me as ‘Dear You’. It was quite intimate and I felt oddly connected to Luke even though I’d never met him and had instead found his letter inside a stapled paper bag labelled ‘You’, which was being given away by Sticky Institute, a Melbourne zine shop.
As for me, I sold quite a few books and had some great conversations with readers. Mostly we talked about libraries. I was encouraging those who seemed genuinely interested in reading The Light Heart of Stone, but weren’t able to buy it on the day, to ask their library to buy it for them. What could be better, really? Readers reading for free; me getting paid and benefitting annually from Australia’s public lending right scheme.
Launch Night
The Melbourne launch of The Light Heart of Stone is on tomorrow at The Wilde at 153 Gertrude Street in Fitzroy. Come along at 6:30 if you’re in the area. It’s free, we’re exhibiting some great art, poets Josh Buckle and Tory Wardlaw are performing and The Bon Scotts are playing live. Better still, you can sit down for a meal afterwards as The Wilde serves some great food.
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