Bad Diaries bring good entertainment

November 7, 2019 BY Klaus Nannestad

THE WORD for Word National Non-Fiction Festival has announced the line-up for its Bad Diaries Salon.

The event, which was a sell-out last year, sees writers and media personalities read entries from their old journals.

David Astle, Jane Caro, David Stavanger, Shokoofeh Azar and Meg Mundell will share their secrets this year, alongside host Jenny Ackland.

Ms Ackland unknowingly planted the seeds for the event in 2017 when she posted to Twitter asking if any authors had their old bad diaries, and received a large amount of responses.

Even before then she had been transcribing some of her old journals into a series of blog that she titled My Bad ’80s Diaries.

She used pseudonyms for the names of most of the main figures in her journal, which turned out to be a wise move as the diaries attracted a large following.

The event will be held at the Geelong Library and Heritage Centre on November 16.

Pre-event drinks will be held at 6pm, with the main event running from 7-8.30pm.