The past few days have been a surreal experience for me. Im here in ubud, bali for the Ubud Writers Festival - my first time in indonesia, and my first time in such a tropical environment. A far cry from the steppe, life is blooming everywhere you look here - plants upon plants, human life, animals. The air is thick, moist, nourishing, and there is an openness, a softness somehow. I am more accustomed to the hostility of the open space where less is more, so am really enjoying this very different reality. Two days ago it was a privilege to share the panel with Colin Thubron, a true master of travel and the written word and one of my favourite travel authors. In response to one question from the audience he said something that stuck with me: I dont travel for leisure, but to understand - I think it says a lot about how important it is to use stories of personal hardship to undertand a place, history and people better. Staying here under the wing of my bloomsbury publicist, I have also been lucky to get to know two great bloomsbury authors - robyn davidson and rayya elias. Some of you may be familiar with Robyn Davidson, and her marvelous book/film tracks, but less familiar with rayya elias. Rayya is a syrian born singer/writer/film maker who moved to detroit as a child, then moved to New York in the punk scene of the 1980s. Ive really relished hearing her stories, from how she met Elizabeth Gilbert (who encouraged Rayya to write her book harley loco) to the reality of getting clean after many years of drug addiction. Today I am having a travellers lunch event with Colin Thubron and Indonesian novelist Ahmad Fuadi. Tomorrow I will be taking a bicycle literary tour and finishing off with an evening screening of my film with q and a. If you are in Ubud, hope you are enjoying the festival! ubudwritersfestival/program/the-travellers-lunch/
Posted on: Fri, 03 Oct 2014 23:36:55 +0000
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