Monday, November 15, 2010

Laura Kroetsch - new Executive Producer of Adelaide Writers’ Week

The Adelaide Festival today announced Laura Kroetsch as the new Executive Producer of Adelaide Writers’ Week – an event which is also confirmed today as going annual from 2012.

Laura Kroetsch joins the Adelaide Festival from the New Zealand International Arts Festival where she was Program Manager of Writers and Readers Week since 2007.

“In a time of renewal for Adelaide Writers’ Week, we are delighted to appoint Laura Kroetsch as Executive Producer, and to announce that Writers’ Week will now run annually from 2012 alongside the Adelaide Festival,” said the Chair of Adelaide Writers’ Week Advisory Committee, Dr Peter Goldsworthy AM.

“An innovative producer of literary events, Laura brings to Writers’ Week a wealth of experience. As the event is co-curated by the Executive Producer and the Advisory Committee, we very much look forward to working with Laura to produce one of the world’s great literary festivals,” said Peter.

A native New Yorker, Laura is an advocate for writers and an active member of the literary community. She is a former Montana New Zealand Book Awards judge and currently sits on the boards of both the New Zealand Post Book Awards and the Bank of New Zealand Literary Awards. Laura has also sat on the Advisory Committee of the New Zealand Writers and Readers Week, managed New Zealand’s national book awards, the national poetry day and literature events for the New Zealand Book Council.

“I am extremely excited by the appointment. I bring a great passion for literature and a belief that literary festivals are a place for public debate and engagement with the ideas that shape contemporary culture,” said Laura Kroetsch.
“The many attractions of Adelaide’s Writers’ Week include the size and reach of the program, the fact that so much of it is free, and that it is run as part of the larger Festival,” she said.

Laura Kroetsch commences her appointment in November 2010.

In addition, the Festival is also delighted to announce the appointment of three international Adelaide Writers’ Week Ambassadors by way of literary luminaries J.M. Coetzee, Susanna Moore and Michael Hulse.

J.M. Coetzee won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2003 and has twice been awarded The Booker Prize, while celebrated American novelist Suzanna Moore is best known for her most recent novels including In the Cut, made into a film by Jane Campion. Coetzee and Moore are joined by Michael Hulse; English translator, critic and poet who has translated over sixty books including works by two Nobel Laureates.

“These outstanding ambassadors in New York, London and Adelaide will help to broaden our international perspective – they have exceptional international contacts and all three have agreed to support Adelaide Writers’ Week – it’s a real coup for the event,” said Peter Goldsworthy.

The full Adelaide Writers’ Week Advisory Committee, chaired by celebrated Australian author and poet Dr Peter Goldsworthy AM, includes award-winning Australian novelist and essayist Professor Brian Castro; best selling and award-winning Australian author Dr Delia Falconer; freelance writer and critic Dr Kerryn Goldsworthy; proprietor of Adelaide’s Imprints Booksellers Jason Lake; award-winning Australian author Melissa Lucashenko; academic, arts critic and commentator Dr Nick Prescott; Adelaide Festival Board Representative Carol Treloar and New York Times best selling and award-winning science fiction author, poet and dj Sean Williams.

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