Peter Carey signs books at the Adelaide Writers' Week

The 2008 Adelaide Writers' Week got off to a 'record-breaking' start on Sunday, with visiting ex-pat Germaine Greer drawing an adoring crowd--and sales of her most recent book Shakespeare's Wife (Bloomsbury) helping the festival bookshop to its best opening day ever.

'We always get big crowds, but Sunday was phenomenal,' festival director Rose White told WBN. 'I do think Germaine was moved by it.'

'It was young people, older people, everyone,' said festival committee member Kathy Paxinos. 'She's just revered.' Paxinos, who worked in the festival bookshop for many years and is now a consultant to the book tent, said that, unsurprisingly, book sales thus far reflected the festival program, with audience members buying the books of those authors they had just heard speak.

International guest Siri Hustvedt certainly impressed audiences, going on to sign books for up to an hour in the harsh Adelaide sun. Her husband Paul Auster has also been drawing the crowds, delighting fans with a reading from a draft of his new novel--not due for publication until later this year.

Peter Carey is another big-name Australian author to return to the country for this year's festival and he too delighted the audience by reading aloud from His Illegal Self (Knopf) and discussing its genesis with fellow Random House author Matthew Condon, author of The Trout Opera (Vintage).

Varied panels on topics such as 'breaking the rules', 'sport', and 'Scotland' are all drawing large crowds, with many observers unable to find a seat and instead taking to the hill behind the two festival tents to watch from the relative cool of the shade. The crowds are all the more impressive considering the weather, which has been in the thirties each day and will reach 37 degrees today.

At night, the balmy atmosphere is just right for the publishers' parties for which the festival is renowned. Allen & Unwin kicked things off with their party on Sunday night, Random House hosted cocktails in the Art Gallery of South Australia courtyard on Monday evening, and the Picador party filled Jolley's Boathouse last night, with guests spilling out onto the river bank.

Publishers and agents who have come to Australia as part of the Australia Council's Visiting International Publishers (VIP) Program have been impressed with their trip so far, with former publisher and now UK agent Patrick Janson-Smith one of many declaring they'd be happy to move to Adelaide.

An industry discussion held on Tuesday morning as part of the VIP Program provoked lively debate on rights territories and translation issues and several book deals appear to be in the works as a result of the program. The VIP Program celebrates its tenth year in 2008.

WBN will report further on Adelaide Writers' Week next week.

This article from Thorpe Bowker's Weekly Book Newsletter and Media Extra is reproduced by kind permission of Thorpe-Bowker, a division of R R Bowker LLC. © Copyright 2008, Thorpe-Bowker

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