AFTER trading the footy for a pen, Brandon Jack is excited to be a part of next month\u2019s Bendigo Writers\u2019 Festival.<\/p>\n
Jack released his first book 28<\/em> last year, a memoir about his life growing up as the son of rugby league footballer Garry Jack and playing 28 games of AFL football for the Sydney Swans over four years before being delisted.<\/p>\n The book explores Jack\u2019s desire to play professional sport and his discovery that his dream wasn\u2019t meant to be.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a book about my relationship with football, and the role football plays in my life is something that everyone has with something different,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cIt resonates with people who never made it to the AFL in some sense because there\u2019s a wanting of something more you don\u2019t achieve; I think that\u2019s common.\u201d<\/p>\n Jack will appear as part of three panels, touching on themes of discipline, failure, masculinity, and emotion.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m really excited about those three panels, even the names are every enticing and they\u2019re things I\u2019d go along to if I was going for my own interests,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve talked about these things before but what I find is I\u2019m still learning in a lot of ways, and I don\u2019t want to come across like I have everything figured out because I\u2019m only 27.<\/p>\n \u201c[I\u2019m] somebody who doesn\u2019t have the answers but is searching for them, and I feel there\u2019s a rawness to that that people respond to.\u201d<\/p>\n After the success of his memoir, Jack said he is keen to keep writing, and will hopefully have a fiction book releasing later this year.<\/p>\n You can catch him on all three days of the writers\u2019 festival, from Friday, 13 May to Sunday, 15 May.<\/p>\n