Crime and garden writers’ festival line-up
InReview

An impressive list of gardening gurus and Australian and international crime writers have been announced for Adelaide’s first Body in the Garden Festival in October.
The festival, to be held in the Adelaide Botanic Gardens from October 25-27, combines two seemingly disparate genres which are both favourites of organisers Rose Wright (former Adelaide Writers’ Week director) and Penelope Curtin.
Among the 22 writers confirmed this week are Australian crime authors Barry Maitland (whose 12 detective novels include The Marx Sisters, All My Enemies and Spider Trap), Shane Maloney (creator of the Murray Whelan series), Michael Rowbotham (psychological thriller writer of titles such as Bleed for Me, Bombproof and the soon-to-be-released Watching You), and “Queen of Australian Crime” Gabrielle Lord (Death by Beauty, Fortress, Whipping Boy).
An international contingent of detective/thriller authors, including Ann Cleeves, Charles Elliott, Toby Musgrave and Hakan Nesser (left), will be showcased at the festival opening event – titled “Burying the Dead: Compost or a Crime?” – at Elder Hall on October 25.
For those more interested in digging up gardens rather than bodies, the writers’ festival has secured a line-up that includes landscape designers Myles Baldwin and Paul Bangay, garden historians Richard Aitken (Oxford Companion to Australian Gardens) and Trisha Dixon (The Vision of Edna Walling), Damon Young (Philosophy in the Garden) and Angus Stewart (ABC’s Gardening Australia).

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Wight and Curtin said the writers they invited to take part were intrigued by the concept and keen to be involved.
“Audiences are sure to discover connections between the worlds of crime and gardening that they weren’t even aware existed,” the pair said in a statement.
The Body in the Garden will feature solo talks, in-conversation sessions and panel discussions, with the full program to be released in September.
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