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The Gawler and Adelaide Plains Festival of Words takes place in Gawler and the Northern Plains Region over the last weekend of July. (this year from the 22^nd to the 25^th) The theme of this years’ Festival is “Recovery” which had particular resonance at this moment of history. Now in its seventh year, the Festival of Words is an established event in the Gawler and Adelaide Plains Regions.

Highlights of this year’s program are:

The Festival is officially opened by Mayor Karen Redman at the P/A on Friday night followed by a poetry Slam.

The poetry slam is a first for Gawler. Poetry slams have become very popular in recent years and as Gawler has an established poetry event it is only fitting that we now host a poetry slam.

On the Saturday there are three writing workshops the first at Gawler Library, hosted by Allayne Webster. Allayne writes for both children and teen audiences and last year her book,  SENSITIVE was Shortlisted for the 2020 Speech Pathology Book of the Year Awards.

The second workshop in Tanunda is hosted by well know south Australian writer Sharon Kernot. The theme of Sharon’s workshop is, long verses. She will discuss a variety of verse novels, explore what they are and how they work aided by exercises and strategies to support writers to begin expressing themselves in this medium.

This is followed by a workshop at Recreate in Mount Pleasant hosted by popular writer Rebecca Sullivan, whose presentation outlines the journey to publishing. Rebecca has written seven non-fiction books.

On Sunday events kick off once again with the Yarning Circle, a well-established Festival tradition, this year hosted by Red Centre Enterprises and held at the P/A followed by lunch and then the Keynote Speech delivered by Michael Bollen of Wakefield Press. We then have the launch of our wonderful Covid Anthology titled, Plague Invasion, put together by Adelaide Plains Poets President, Carolyn Cordon. The book will be launched by the editor of The Bunyip Nick Hopton. With contributions from across the globe, this is a timely reflection of how Covid impacted the world in the past year.

All day Sunday Wakefield Press will be running a Pop Up Bookshop at the P/A so pop in to browse or buy some South Australian fiction or non fiction, hot off the press.

This is followed by the announcement of the winners of the Adelaide Plains Poetry Competition.

The Saturday events are two writers’ workshops the first to be held in Tanunda and the second in Mt Pleasant. Festival organisers hope to be able to provide a bus to transport Gawler residents to both locations. The workshops will be hosted by Sharon Kernot and Rebecca Sullivan.

The aims of the festival are to bring local people with an interest in writing together, to inspire and encourage local writers and aspiring writers and provide a platform for different mediums of creative “word-smithing” such as film scriptwriting and podcasting as well as writing verse and prose as well as highlighting the arts culture of the region.