Skip to content

Chris Hammer

Festival bliss

  • by
I bloody love festivals. Spending time with other writers – chatting with them onstage and off – is such a buzz. I always come away invigorated and buoyed up. I’m with my people – those who understand all the craziness of the publishing industry – and it is pure bliss. So I was absolutely delighted to be a part of the inaugural Sorrento Writers Festival, conveniently located in my ‘backyard’.

Read More »Festival bliss

And what a festival it was. The unpredictable Naarm/Melbourne weather decided to play nice and we had glorious sunshine and big blue skies. The venues were all walking distance from each other, and every session that I attended was packed. It seems the peninsula has an avid reading population, though many came from further afield. The line-up of authors was ridiculously good – Christos Tsiolkas, Sarah Winman, Tom Keneally, Jane Harper, Marcia Langton, Craig Silvey and Chloe Hooper, to name but a few.

I moderated two panels and had the most fun. First up was Rijn Collins, who I have stalked on Instagram for some time, and Chris Hammer, an old Canberra mate. One of my favourite moments was when I asked Rijn about her writing rituals and she said, ‘Mine are very boring,’ then proceeded to describe how she wrote Fed to Red Birds with a tiny snake curled up inside her bra. So boring, right?

All the happenings

  • by
It almost feels like we’re back to normal with events again, and it was so lovely to recently head over to gorgeous Western Australia for the Margaret River Readers and Writers Festival. I took a week beforehand to travel the coast from Bremer Bay to Margaret River and, my goodness, it is stunning! I knew that the beaches were all white sand and turquoise water but I didn’t realise that they were next-level stunning. World class, in fact. If anyone wants to hand me the job of WA publicist, I’m up for it! The weather was warm and we swam and hiked and explored and generally had the most glorious time.

Read More »All the happenings

 

I finished up with a weekend at the festival where I interviewed a bunch of lovely people for my Secrets from the Green Room podcast as part of a special partnership with the festival. It was so great to be hanging with my literary tribe again! The first ep with Claire G. Coleman is up now and – like all our guests – she speaks with brutal honesty about the writing and publishing process.

Secrets from the Green Room

  • by
Mega exciting news! This year I’ve been busily planning a new writing podcast with my co-host Craig Cormick, called Secrets from the Green Room. Craig and I have known each other for more than 20 years. I first met him in my second year studying creative writing when he happened to be my tutor, and since then we’ve made books together, been in a writing group together, and now we’re hosting a podcast together. And boy is it a lot of work starting a podcast! I knew it would be, and yet…

Read More »Secrets from the Green Room

Our tagline is ‘The author stories you won’t hear anywhere else’ because the podcast is taking green room chat live. When writers get together — be it in green rooms or bars or cafes — they talk frankly about the pleasures and pitfalls of writing and publishing in ways that they usually don’t when put on a stage at a festival. So Secrets from the Green Room is going to take you backstage, with thanks to our sponsor and supporter, the ACT Writers Centre.

Season 1 features James Bradley, Holden Sheppard, Karen Viggers, Chris Hammer, Anna Spargo-Ryan, and more. We talk about everything from rejected manuscripts that never made it to publication (Anna Spargo-Ryan), how the publisher you choose can have a big impact on sales — and no, it’s not necessarily about big versus small publishers (Chris Hammer), the perceived glamour of an author’s life versus the reality (Karen Viggers), being snubbed by literary big shots in the green room (Holden Sheppard) and so many other things besides.