Willy Lit Fest

Williamstown Literary Festival invites you to bring your own treasured recipe to share at this tasty interactive session exploring the stories behind favourite recipes. Recipes are instructions: they list what you need in the order you need it, tell you how to combine it all and what temperature the oven should be to cook it. But sometimes, they’re a whole lot more than dinner. They can be mementos and memoir, travel souvenirs, family chronicles; some are as lyrical and poignant as poetry.

Bring your own treasured recipes to share – you know, like you’d bring a plate – and together we’ll talk about flavour, memory and the rich language of food and family at this fun, chatty interactive session. Maybe it’s the work of a flash celebrity chef (Jamie Oliver anyone?) that you’ve made your own or the evocative beauty of Elizabeth David’s writing. Or a hand-me-down classic, synonymous with happy times.

Expect some laughs, some memories and maybe even a couple of ideas for lunch as we explore why recipes are often so much more than the sum of their ingredients and methods.

Michelle Fincke started writing as a cadet reporter at The Herald newspaper and has written for publications including The Sun and Sunday Sun, The Age, Daily Life, The Australian Way for Qantas, the City of Maribyrnong blog and was Melbourne editor of The Australian Women’s Weekly. She’s worked in and taught publicity and public relations, and is currently a non-fiction writing teacher at Victoria Polytechnic, as well as freelance writer/editor, currently for Fernwood magazine. As editor of the kitchen-focused House magazine she lived her foodie dream: a dream made just a little less dreamy by banging out meals for her four kids. She won’t debone a quail but can debeard a mussel, and takes pavlova-making very seriously.