The Age Top 100 2012
Last week The Age in their Melbourne Magazine printed their annual list of the top 100 people in Melbourne. Not only was my daughter Lisa Dempster on the list, but she was listed at No 1. This was a very proud moment for me, but Lisa has worked extremely hard to get to where she is today. I am very much in awe of my amazing daughter.
Here’s the article as written in The Age:
Lisa Dempster, New Director of the Melbourne Writers Festival
Prologue: : Six years ago, Lisa Dempster was sitting in the audience at the Emerging Writers Festival sessions – all of them. “I’m the kind of person who will go to a whole festival, not just one event”, she says. Dempster’s passion for writing and publishing (and festivals) saw her rise from audience member to director in 2010, a position she held for three festivals.
New Chapter: Dempster started her new role as director of the Melbourne Writers Festival (MWF) in October, following outgoing director Steve Grimwade, who also came from the EWF.
Cut’n’paste: The vegetarian, biking Dempster calls her background ïndependant DIY, punk”. She ran small publisher Vignette Press for five years; her tale of a 1200 kilometre Buddhist pilgrimage through the mountains of Japan, Neon Pilgrim was published by a small press too. Äfter it came out, I had a finger wagging lunch with an agent who said the book could have been enormous”.
Tweet that: The 33 year old has been online since she was 15. I’m interested in how we present artistic work int he digital space”, she says. “But what makes a festival fantastic is bringing people together to celebrate the written word, in all it’s forms”.
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Congrats! How fabulous and you must be so proud 🙂 I’ve just downloaded Lisa’s book from Smashwords and look forward to the read.
I really hope you enjoy Neon Pilgrim Fi. Look forward to hearing what you think after you’ve read it. Quite a difficult book for a Mum to read about her daughter. But very proud.
You must surely have been bursting with pride Jennifer! Like you I”m often in awe of my 3 daughters’ achievements. Peter jokes it’s as well we never read a book we bought when they were tiny called “raising independent and professionally successful daughters ” (or similar). 🙂
I can definitely identify with what you say. I always said I would bring my daughter up to be independant and confident. Yes, the family are very very proud.