THE Words in the Valley Festival on the weekend proved a success and a drawcard for the many people interested in writing short stories, novels or even songs.
Organised by local author Sarah Evans, the workshops held at the Bridgetown Library featured Evans herself, together with author and songwriter Jane Cornes and Leanne White, representing Wild Eyed Press Publishers.
Later in the evening the three speakers were joined at Bridgetown Pottery by horror writer Dan Russell, chick lit and women's fiction writer Lindy Dale from Bridgetown, life story writer Noreen Reeves and local author of Song of Australia Stephen Crabbe, who then gave readings of their books and joined in a question and answer session.
It was reported that having done so much talking throughout the day, Evans had lost her voice and the reading of her book had to be done by Cornes, while Evans resorted to a form of sign language.
The following day, having recovered some of her vocal powers, Evans said the festival was a great success and there were excellent numbers for the workshops, talks and Soup 'n' Stories.
Wild Eyed Press donated a large number of books to the library as a thank you for hosting the event.
"The presenters too were more than generous with their time and expertise and were happy to pitch in and help make the festival happen as we had no funding this year," Evans said.
"Jane Cornes went the extra mile by performing at the Cidery with her partner Neil and running a special song-writing class on top of her creative writing workshop and Soup 'n' Stories performance.
"She also read out my excerpt from my crime novel Operation Paradise as by that time I had just about lost my voice.
"We had about 30 people attend workshops and were just shy of 40 at the Soup 'n' Song.
"I have already started putting ideas together for next year's festival."
