Author Gina Chick to reunite with deep Illawarra family and cultural ties at True Story Festival

Alone Australia winner and South Coast-based author Gina Chick will be among the speakers at the third annual True Story Festival this month, drawn by her close connections to this year’s program lineup.

Among those ties are festival speaker Dr Jodi Edwards, who helped Chick craft her possum jacket on the SBS TV show, and the screening of a film about Charmian Clift, Chick’s grandmother, which opens the festival.

Chick will close the event, which is unique in Australia for its exclusive focus on creative non-fiction writing – a genre increasingly drawing large audiences at major festivals, according to festival artistic director and non-fiction writer Caroline Baum.

As a curator for the collaborative event with the South Coast Writers Centre, Caroline said she could see people were desperate for measured, considered analysis of the big issues in our lives.

“People were coming to festivals because they felt that those were safer spaces where they could hear more measured, considered views on things that were impacting on their own lives,” she said.

While she admitted it was often a balancing act between providing equal billing to Illawarra writers and big names from other regions, it was sometimes the Illawarra talent that drew the crowds.

“We’re particularly fortunate we have Dr Jodi Edwards in the community who, for the first two years of the festival, led absolutely sellout sessions, teaching us words of Dharawal language,” Caroline said.

“She’d written books teaching Dharawal to kids, and when we offered that to our audiences in a slot that was open as much to adults as to children, it was taken up incredibly enthusiastically and Jodi had the longest signing lines at our first two festivals.

“She’ll be back again this year, presenting some new research she’s got a significant grant for on the relationship between Indigenous communities on the coast with the whale population. That’s what she’s writing about now.”

Caroline said the lovely thing was that Jodi’s session would lead into the final one on Sunday with Chick.

“Of course, it was Jodi Edwards who taught Gina Chick how to make that possum fur coat,” she said, laughing.

Caroline said she was aware they were lucky to secure Chick, whose publicist had managed festival appearances to target bigger events before doing a more regional tour next year.

However, being top of Caroline’s hit list, she asked the question and by chance the lineup became the clincher.

“I’ve always wanted to have in the festival a film about a writer, and there hasn’t always been one to choose from. This year, there was Life Burns High, the new documentary about Charmian Clift,” she said of one of Australia’s finest and most iconic writers, who was born in Kiama in the 1920s.

“It just so happens that we’re opening the festival on Friday night with the screening of Life Burns High with the filmmaker, the producer and Charmian Clift’s most definitive biographer, Nadia Wheatley.

“When I asked Gina whether she would come and do the festival, the clincher was that we were showing the film about her grandmother.

“So we open with Charmian and we close with Gina, and there’s something so meaningful to her and to us about that. It just sits so right.”

Tied to this year’s festival theme The State of Us, keynote speaker Rick Morton will speak about his “new absolutely scorching book” on Robodebt, Mean Streak.

“I think this is a story that has implications for everybody in terms of vigilance against this kind of government harassment,” Caroline said.

“There’s a shock and a sort of detonation from one of his literary hand grenades in every chapter.”

The lineup also includes Michael Visontay with his part-detective story and part-memoir, Noble Fragments, and Rosie Batty sharing the inspiring memoir Hope.

Caroline said the festival was a safe space for people to have expansive conversations, meet their heroes and make new friends.

“I see people make new friends or discover that someone is a neighbour or lives down the road, or that they share an enthusiasm for something,” she said.

“There’s an absolutely extraordinary energy of connection at festivals, which is why I think people become festival junkies.”

True Story Festival will be held from 15-17 November at Coledale Community Hall. See the lineup and full program.