The South Coast Readers & Writers Festival returns to Thirroul in less than a month! Join us over the weekend of July 5 and 6 for gripping and challenging conversations, tales ancient and new, poetry readings, current affairs, and insights into the business of publishing. Discover new authors and find your next favourite read.

We sat down with one of the festival’s local authors, David Stavanger (The Drop Off), to talk all things writing and reading.

What is your latest writing project?

My third collection, The Drop Off, which is out now with Upswell Publishing. It's a blend of poetry, found text, short-form prose, reportage, and longer poetic nonfiction that explores the day-to-day reality of co-parenting amid growing environmental and class concerns, and the ways we stay afloat. It's been five years since my last book, keen to give this work some love and do a bunch of readings before I settle on my next writing project. 

What are you reading right now?

I'm someone who usually has a few books on the go, I'm not a quick reader by any means. Currently it's Rachel Cusk's Outline, Pedro Almodóvar's fantastic short story collection The Last Dream, and Hasib Hourani's Rock Flight (which is a brilliant poetry collection.) 

What book made you want to be a writer?

There are a few key works that shaped that desire, three big ones would be:

1. A Yevgeny Yevtushenko collected poems my Mum owned; it was the first poetry collection I read.

2. The United States of Poetry, an anthology series put together by Bob Holman. I bought the CD when I was at Wollongong Uni and it opened my mind up to the possibilities of poetry in terms of form and medium, still a big favourite I turn to at times. 

3. Stephen King. All of his books that I read as a teen. 

What does your writing space look like?

A cluttered but strangely contained hot mess in a corner of the lounge room.  

What is your writing routine?

I often try to create one, but writing has to fit around my full-time arts job, and being a partner and parent. Which is good with me, as life before art (or life as art). Often, I write fragments within certain moments, and they become poems. 

General admission and limited single session tickets are now on sale for the South Coast Readers & Writers Festival – go to southcoastwriters.org/festival