I was lucky enough to be asked to be ‘in conversation’ with Alison Lester at today’s Festival. I’d prepared lots of questions, more than I expected to need. And yesterday I combined giving driving practice with visits to all the libraries in our LGA to collect as many of her books as I could. And that’s quite a few!

I wanted to be able to get a picture of her ‘evolution’ as a creator. And an amazing evolution it has been. Alison began her career illustrating books of others, moved to illustrating her own words and in some of her most recent projects, she is writing and others are illustrating for her.

It was great fun and she was very generous with her responses.

After lunch, I attended a workshop on blogging, with a diverse group of people blogging (or intending to) blog for a range of reasons. The workshop was led by Angela Meyer who blogs here and elsewhere. She talked about the what, why and how of blogging and different ways of establishing and extending readership.

I was interested in learning about some of the different platforms, and it seems there is a blog platform for just about everyone, from the beginner to those wanting to do more. One interesting titbit was that a sure-way to increase traffic is to use lists and factoids! So watch out for those appearing here! Well, maybe.

Looking forward to tomorrow and more workshops and maybe a couple of extra sessions if I can fit them in without overloading my brain.