While fiction writing demands a special type of imagination, the author of a work of non-fiction also needs a generous amount of those thought processes, combined with an instinctive adherence to facts.
Interestingly, the nonfiction author has, in terms of their writing, an allegiance to fact and it was that very need to lead to the birth of Australia's only specific literary nonfiction festival, Reality Bites.
Working at the time with the then Noosa Council, Bernice Child, discovered Queensland's Sunshine Coast to be poorly served in terms of writing and books.
Conscious of that fact she instigated the festival three years ago and although Council still supports it, the event is now organized independently by the Sunshine Hinterland Writers' Centre, a group of volunteers, including the program director, Annette Hughes, who moved to Cooroy on the coast's hinterland to care for aging parents.
Annette, previously a literary agent in the publishing industry, now devotes much of her free time to organizing, planning and articulating the festival's vision.
The 2011 festival will be the fourth and rather than being over two weekends, it will be scaled back to just one with particular focus on workshops enabling local, developing writers the opportunity to learn from established authors.
The one-weekend festival will be an opportune time for fresh volunteers to learn about the workings of the event before embarking on the longer, more complex two-weekend biennial event.
Cooroy has a new "green" library, opened earlier this year, and early plans for next year's festival call for a tent to be pitched on its grass covered roof as a venue for much of the program.
Details of the 2011 festival have not yet been finalised, but just as soon as they are, Annette says they will be posted on the Reality Bites blog.
