Angela O’Keefe
The person who changed things for me at a crucial time was Peter Bishop. Peter had been director at Varuna…
For almost 15 years, Peter Bishop has been filling large red and black notebooks with imaginings of a national community of writers based in the community of the Blue Mountains. From 1994 to 2010, Peter was Foundation Creative Director of Varuna - The Writers’ House.
He was integral to the establishment of the secure foundation on which Varuna continues to build. And he discovered a happy lifetime commitment to a conversation with Australian writers and with the community of the Blue Mountains.
Photogapher: Bette Mifsud
The ecosystem created by the interaction of The Writer Conversation with The Reader Conversation enables Peter’s imaginings to get out of the notebooks and into reality: ideal creative environments for both writers and readers, entirely self-funding and cost-free beyond the annual fee...
Working with writers is Peter’s passion: every writer is a new adventure. He has been thanked in literally hundreds of books. His favourite tribute can be found in Dennis McIntosh’s The Tunnel:
Angela O’Keefe was awarded the Christina Stead Prize for Fiction in the New South Wales Premier’s Awards 2024 for her novel The Sitter. In a blog for the State Library of Queensland’s series The Turning Point she wrote the following:
We acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of the lands upon which we work and live. We pay our respects to Elders, past, present and future, as well as all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples – their Country, Culture, and Community.
