I always like to shop in Red Kangaroo Books in Alice Springs at the end of our Desert Writer’s trip. I’m hungry for more desert stories and in the past I’ve carried home Fishtails in the Dust , Barry Hill’s great tome, Broken Song and I was eyeing off the Tale of Freida Keysser but it was way to big to carry. But then I found Kathleen Kemarre Wallace’s book, Listen Deeply, told to Judy Lovell and published by IAD Press in 2009. (How I hadn’t come across it before I don’t know, but they say books always turn up when you are ready for them). In Listen Deeply Kathleen, an Eastern Arrernte painter, tells stories of her elders and her way of life as a child and young woman growing up in the central desert. With her own paintings and photos by Judy Lovell brilliantly art designed by Darren Pfitzner of A4 Art, this book goes beyond being a mere reading experience. Each story takes you into the place of its telling, not just with words but through colour, language, sound, smell, taste, texture and most importantly spirit. You feel as though you are sitting in the desert sand at the waterhole with Kemarre, letting these stories in (as she advises on the inside cover of the book), listening so deeply you never want to leave.

BOOKING NOW!  July: Backstage Bali &Bali Long Weekend, Nov:Mekong Meditations, January: Moroccan Caravan. March: Fiji Island Writers Lab.

IN PLANNING 2013:  May: Bookish in Bhutan, Festival and Retreat; June: To The Lighthouse Walk & Write Croajigalong National Park; Nov: Mekong Writers Lab;  Dec: Burmese Temple Tour.

Contact Jan to express interest in any of the above.