This year's Perth Writer's Festival, held from 22 to 24 February, attracted ‘over 15000' people according to program manager Katherine Dorrington.
This was an increase of around 3000 on last year and included attendances at both free and ticketed events.

‘We had great audiences for all events but in particular our special events,' Dorrington told us. These included ‘The Moth' a performance that involved four festival writers getting on stage to tell unscripted stories, or, as the program put it ‘an evening of unashamedly old-fashioned storytelling.'

Also popular was a session with Chaser members Julian Morrow and Dominic Knight, a five-course degustation dinner with Greg and Lucy Malouf and another foodie event A Parisienne Afternoon Tea, featuring visiting author Clotilde Dusoulier and Australian food writer Stephen Downes.

A new initiative, the free ‘family day' was also a great success. ‘We invited them to take over on that day,' said Dorrington. ‘There were author events, workshops, illustration demonstrations, all free for families.'

It was an innovation that worked particularly well in the festival's new setting at the University of Western Australia.

‘[The new setting] has a really relaxed vibe. We had beautiful grounds and weather and lots of people mingling about,' said Dorrington. She said the new setting allowed more room for the bookshop and an expanded café.

‘It feels like a natural home,' said Dorrington.

The festival bookshop did a roaring trade in Peter Godwin's When a Crocodile Eats the Sun (Pan Macmillan) and Shadow of the Silk Road (Colin Thubron, Chatto & Windus). 'We also sold out of Naomi Wolf's The End of America (Scribe),' said Crawford, naming Wolf and Australian author Shane Maloney as the writers people were 'queuing up to see.'

This article from Australian Bookseller & Publisher magazine is reproduced by kind permission of Thorpe-Bowker, a division of R R Bowker LLC. © Copyright 2008, Thorpe-Bowker

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