Vintage

2004 marks the tenth year of the Mildura Writers Festival, an arts festival noted for its camaraderie, conviviality and hospitality. Writers, poets and cooks are all in attendance, and attend one anothers sessions; they eat - or rather feast - together from breakfast to dinner and beyond; and they join in the festivities and conversations that make these days one long and lively celebration. "Vintage" captures between its covers a selection from festivals past, and the contributors will be well known to Australians. The works cross a wide range of genres: poems, stories, essays, memoirs, interviews, song lyrics and recipes. For the last several years, the festival has invited a guest chef to present a special dinner, and the recipes here are for some of the dishes they prepared at Mildura. The book is arranged into sections, each like a course or perhaps a meal in itself, in which the various flavours that compose the festival blend in their own distinct way. It is a book to take pleasure in, for its entertainment and provocation; its levity and intensity; its glittering surfaces and its deep thoughtfulness.