Reflections on the Good Life: The Tamar Valley Writers Festival 2022

by Lyndon Riggall and Georgie Todman who are Co-Presidents of the Tamar Valley Writers Festival

As the world changed in 2020, many of us had to stop and take a moment of reflection. So much of the life we thought we knew was stripped away from us in an instant, and we were lost, confused and found that our old certainties quickly came into question. We sought comfort, rekindling the joy we found in old hobbies. We embraced escapism once again.

Many of us returned to reading.

Martin Flanagan at the gala lunch of the Tamar Valley Writers Festival 2022 launch with Jane Tewson and Charles Lane.

Adam Thompson talks parenting with Miles Franklin Winner Melissa Lucashenko at the Tamar Valley Writers Festival 2022.

The pandemic of COVID-19 tried its best against the Tamar Valley Writers Festival, but our core mission remained strong as we strived to maintain our passion for the love of stories through smaller events and workshops, a mini-festival, a podcast series and the publication of a free children’s book. From the 14th to the 17th of October 2022, the festival was back and better than ever. With satellite events featuring such admired public figures as Dr Norman Swan (So You Want to Live Younger Longer? Hachette) and Indira Naidoo (The Space Between the Stars, Murdoch Books), our fully-fledged festival began with an opening gala lunch at Peppers Silo Hotel as Martin Flanagan interviewed Jane Tewson and Charles Lane.

Then, the festival took readers, writers and thinkers on a whirlwind tour of ideas in the Tamar Valley, where our panelists offered their wisdom on such diverse topics as writing from truth, editing and publishing, crime, travel and parenthood.

Jane Tewson, founder of Igniting Change, discusses her incredible life.

We celebrated local writers such as Robbie Arnott, Robyn Mundy, Kate Kruimink, Lucy Christopher and Karen Brooks, and welcomed further writers from the “big island,” in the form of some of our most exciting contemporary voices, such as Melissa Lucashenko, Pip Williams, Winnie Dunn, Jock Serong, Michael Burge and Jonathon Butler.

Sessions included such inspiring experiences as a celebration of earth with Bob Brown at Pilgrim Uniting Church, a gala lunch with Jane Rawson and Pip Williams at the spectacular Waterton Hall, a walking tour of Beaconsfield with the inimitable Bert Spinks, and a day of inspiring wisdom and workshops from local writers at the new library within the Inveresk campus of the University of Tasmania.

True to its intent as a proving ground for the valley’s next voices, the festival also held an extensive youth program across Exeter and the Northern Suburbs, which offered exciting development opportunities in areas such as dialogue, plot problem solving, spoken word poetry and visual languages.

Mary Machen (middle) gives out the “New Voice” award to Mieke Burch, while Thompson looks on with pride.

We also celebrated the work of local writers through our short story competition, with categories from primary school age through to an open section, and even the inaugural Adam Thompson “New Voice” award, won by emerging writer Mieke Burch. These fabulous stories—available on the TVWF website—clearly demonstrate that the future of writing on our island is in very safe hands.

Our 2022 festival was themed around the notion of “the good life,” a concept that has deep relevance to both existence and art. As a community, over the last few years we have asked what it means to live a good life, and how to create a version of ourselves that still services the people around us, our relationships, and our own souls in a changing world. That said, the Tamar Valley Writers Festival was also a celebration. Life is good. We have so much to be grateful for, and so much that can be shared and understood and made anew in our collective creativity of writing, imagining and wondering.

We take over as co-presidents of this festival following the presidencies of Mary Machen and Marj Colvill, both of whom, through their leadership, saw us steadily through four days of complete immersion in all that’s best of art and living. While we are already busily planning events for 2023, our next full festival will arrive in 2024. Until then, our mission remains the same: to celebrate the stories that define us, here in the place we call home.

We can’t wait to see you soon to collectively delight in the world of words. Until then, we hope you are thriving as you read, write, think and relish all that can be found in the good life.