Writers to be celebrated

The Shore Lines Writing for Performance festival will take over Bunbury’s city centre on Saturday, with finalists in the annual competition taking to the stage at the Rose Hotel and the Bunbury Regional Entertainment Centre.

The annual competition invites people to submit pieces of writing intended for performance, including songs, plays, monologues and ‘performance prose’.

Competition winners were announced in March and awarded the opportunity to perform their entries.

Shore Lines coordinator Lisa Hoskin said she was excited about this year’s festival.

“It’s a whole new format and we are lucky enough to be performing in the brand-new state-of-the-art Cube theatre as well as the Sky Bar at BREC, ” she said.

Bunbury poet Xan Ashbury won the competition and a week-long retreat at the Katharine Susannah Prichard Writers’ Centre.

Long-standing participant and organiser Norm Flynn, who is also a finalist in this year’s competition, said uncertainty around continued funding made the festival’s future uncertain.

“I think it’s rather sad – it can only go ahead with someone in the administration role, ” he said.

“The council have performed that role over the years — I don’t know if we can still do it.”

The free festival will open tomorrow night with an open mic night at BREC from 6pm.