As
I write, I am overlooking the sparkling bay of Noosa Heads in Queensland.
Rosellas are screeching overhead and there is a soft breeze blowing.
Reclining on the spacious terrace of my apartment and leisurely writing
is my idea of a holiday. This is "The Great Outdoors",
the land of clear blue skies, wide-open spaces and brilliant sunshine.
The alluring aroma of snags (sausages) on a barbeque somewhere nearby
drifts past my nose! Comfort food to so many of us who grew up in this
sunburnt country.
I am appearing at the Noosa Long Weekend as a festival director, writer, village chef and moderator and I am on a mission to meet some of the novelists (who are) appearing in this seaside event, as well as a spot of R&R, of course. Now in its seventh year, the Noosa Long Weekend is a home-grown mini arts festival that features music, art and literature. A curious title, I hear you say, as it spans ten days and that adds up to a very long weekend. Well, we like to do things differently in Australia! My job was to interview the likes of David and Kristin Williamson, Louis Nowra and Mandy Sayer, Janelle McCulloch and Mohamad Khadra, an assortment of accomplished Australian playwrights and authors alongside emerging talent.
As you probably know, in my non-culinary life I wear the well-worn cap as the director of the Ubud Writers & Readers Festival and author of Fragrant Rice. And I have to admit, the rewards in sporting these extra glitzy feathers are immense especially when you are invited to other festivals in the region. Meeting new faces in the literary world always gives me great pleasure. Oh, yes, the parties and free-flowing wine are an added bonus too!
But it's hard for me to talk about other writers' festival without chatting about my own! So let me shed a little light on our 2009 event. Named "one of the top six writers' festivals in the world", the Ubud Writers & Readers Festival has played host to such luminaries as Michael Ondaatje, Amitav Ghosh, Kiran Desai, Anita Desai, Xinran, Richard Flanagan, John Berendt and William Dalrymple. It has also become somewhat of a springboard for writers by offering opportunities to appear elsewhere on the literary circuit. From Ubud, Indonesian writers such as Laksmi Pamuncak, Putu Wijaya, Johnny Waromi and Wayan Juniartha have been invited to Festivals in Byron Bay, Darwin, Hong Kong and Canada, while other Australian and international writers like Patrick Gale have been invited to Beijing, Hong Kong and Sri Lanka after gracing the stage in Ubud.
When I return to Ubud it will be full-salsa-speed ahead as we start to draw all the numerous strings of the Festival into a finely-tuned bow. And who could imagine a four-day event could be such hard work. The sheer logistics of organizing more than eighty writers is a mammoth task, with forty venues to be booked, planning the program and gathering volunteers among the many other jobs required to complete the event. I am tired just thinking about it. Do I really want to leave Noosa?
And what's a writers' festival without great food? During the month of October, Casa Luna, our restaurant in the main road of Ubud, will be featuring the favourite recipes of the writers appearing this year.
From Haiti to Zimbabwe, from coconut to corn, the Casa Luna menu will feature exotic dishes from more than twenty countries that will include Australia, India, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines, Italy, Burma, Zimbabwe, Kenya, Haiti, Turkey, Pakistan, Mexico and Nepal. The Casa Luna chefs have been chatting overtime to the writers and gleaning family secrets and stories that are an invaluable part in making these treasured dishes. I can see a wonderful cookbook looming on the horizon!
Leading this year's Ubud Writers & Readers Festival line-up are Nobel laureates J.M. Coetzee and Wole Soyinka, Vikas Swarup, Fatima Bhutto, Mohammed Hanif, Hari Kunzru, Dany Laferriere, Kate Grenville, Lloyd Jones, Seno Gumira Adjidarma, Sonya Hartnett, Arthur Flowers, Dede Oetomo and Alison Lester.
It will be the master chefs meeting the masters of pen and prose. Casa Luna will host one of the most exciting and eclectic menus you will ever see representing award winning authors, poets and playwrights from all corners of the globe.
And beyond the culinary bonus is four days of Ubud Writers & Readers Festival magic with panel sessions, literary lunches, book launches, readings, cocktail parties, debates and performances that run into the wee hours of the morning. Stay tuned!
Ubud Writers & Readers Festival dates: October 7 – 11.
Janet DeNeefe is the owner of Casa Luna and Indus restaurants, author of Fragrant Rice, and creator of the Ubud Readers & Writers Festival. She also runs the Casa Luna Cooking School.
