One of the highlights of this year’s Bathurst Writers’ and Readers’ Festival will again be the Great Festival Read, or giant Bathurst Book Club. This hugely popular feature of the local program sees booklovers reading the same book in the lead-up to the Festival weekend on May 23-24th at the Bathurst Memorial Entertainment Centre (BMEC).
This year’s book is Soft Serve by George Kemp. Set in a regional McDonald’s, as bushfires close in, three twenty-somethings and their dead friend’s mum all face a reckoning. Charming and poignant, full of wit and heart, Soft Serve is a gem of a novel about small-town lives and the search for genuine sustenance in a fast-food world.
George Kemp is an award-winning playwright, a writer for stage, page and screen, and a CSU- Bathurst Alumni. He has worked for Bell Shakespeare and NIDA, and is currently Resident Artist at Australian Theatre for Young People. Soft Serve is his debut novel.
Readers and local book groups are invited to read the book prior to the Festival and to participate in the Great Festival Read session, which includes a panel discussion, after which the author will appear in conversation. The Great Festival Read session time and details will be announced in the Festival Program, which will be released in April. Copies of Soft Serve are available from BooksPlus and Bathurst Library.
