BELLINGEN Readers & Writers Festival will present a conversation between author Delia Falconer and Carolyn ‘Caz’ Heise who will navigate the discussion around Delia’s latest book, ‘Signs & Wonders: Dispatches from a Time of Beauty and Loss’.

“My new book ‘Signs and Wonders’ is about how it feels to be living in an unrolling planetary climate crisis,” Delia told News Of The Area.

“It’s a book about living with a heightened awareness of beauty and loss and how we’re trying to stretch our imaginations to accommodate both.”

One of her aims in this book was to look at how scientists, philosophers and writers have been responding to a present that’s becoming increasingly uncanny and unpredictable.

“But it felt important to me to bring these huge ideas down to a personal, human scale and explore them as a mother and a lover of nature.

“So readers will find essays about the 200 kilogram seal Sealvester who turned up in the park below our apartment and whether this was a sign of an improving harbour or something deeply out of whack, and about feeding birds with my late mother and how birds make us think about deep time.

“I’ll be talking about this new book in one session, and with philosophers Danielle Celermajer and Tim Dean about adapting.

“I’m also speaking on panels about magic realism in Australian fiction, which will have me thinking back to my first novel ‘The Service of Clouds’, and historical novels, in which I’ll talk about that first book, which is set in the Blue Mountains of NSW at the beginning of last century, and my second, ‘The Lost Thoughts of Soldiers’, which is set during the Plains Indians Wars in America.

“I’m thrilled to be coming up to Bellingen.

“It’s such a beautiful part of the world and it’s been many years since my last visit,” she said.

Delia Falconer is the award-winning author of four books.

Her short stories and essays have been widely awarded and anthologised, while her novels, ‘The Service of Clouds’,

‘The Lost Thoughts of Soldiers’, and her memoir, ‘Sydney’, have been shortlisted for national awards across the categories of fiction, nonfiction, innovation, history, and biography; including the Miles Franklin, Prime Minister’s Literary Awards and the National Biography Awards.

In 2018 she was winner of the Walkley-Pascall Award for Arts Criticism for her essay ‘The Opposite of Glamour’.
This marked a turn in her work towards writing about the profound challenges we are all facing – human and non-human alike – in a present of accelerating global change.

Her fourth book, ‘Signs and Wonders: Dispatches from a Time of Beauty and Loss’, is published by Scribner Australia.

Dr Delia Falconer is a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at UTS.

Coffs Harbour Book Warehouse continues its relationship with the Festival as its Official Bookseller.

Bellingen Readers & Writers Festival takes place at Bellingen Showground from June 10-12.

For more details see www.bellingenwritersfestival.com.au.

By Andrea FERRARI