Sydney writers at Festival time

Abstract

The vestibule of the Sydney Town Hall might at first seem a strange place to spend four preciously long January afternoons in the height of a Sydney summer. Far from the golden haze of Sydney's beaches, dominated by a festively lit chandelier of monstrous proportions and smothered in ornamental detailing, that grand room proved a most sympathetic, informal and convenient venue for the staging of the second "Writers' Week" at the Sydney Festival. In view of this year's success the writers' festival looks like becoming an annual event. It was so well attended that the entire show was forced to move from the vestibule to the main concert hall - Centennial Hall for the historically-minded - for the final Sunday sessions. This Town Hall of ours, built in the high summer of Sydney's Victorian age, was also a grand venue for the launching of The View from Tinsel Town, an anthology of pieces based on the proceedings of last year's festival. Tinsel Town, the book, bears both the Penguin logo and Southerly a cherubic Auster, was edited by "Writers' Week" organizer, Tom Thompson (of the N.S.W. Committee of the National Book Council), and was officially launched by Thomas Keneally on the final day of the festivities.