The three-day Newcastle Writers Festival has written itself back into Hunter life, with the first proper event in three years due to the pandemic.
Festival director Rosemarie Milsom was relieved the festival went ahead, given the long hiatus in times of plague.
"For me, it's been a surreal three years. We haven't had a festival since 2019," Ms Milsom said.
The festival had to be run online in 2020 and wasn't held last year.
"Each year we planned for it, investing time and energy in creating programs that haven't been able to be realised.
"So to finally have a program that has been realised feels almost overwhelming. I'd like to give a huge thank you to everyone who supported us - audiences, writers, sponsors, volunteers."
She said the multi-faceted event was "not a simple undertaking".
"Everyone has shown up and given their all."
The program included 70 events with about 120 writers. About 5000 people attended the event across three days - from Friday to Sunday.
The festival's popularity was highlighted by a place bookworms love to be - a bookshop.
"I walked into the festival bookshop on Saturday and it was teeming with people. People queued for 90 minutes to get their book signed by Trent Dalton," Ms Milsom said.
Filling in for a host who came down with COVID, Ms Milsom interviewed Dalton at City Hall on Saturday.
"He had the whole audience singing. It was incredible."
Dalton was on his feet leading the audience of hundreds in an impromptu rendition of the Beatles song All You Need is Love.
Ms Milsom previewed the festival in the Newcastle Herald on Friday, by saying it was "about love in all its forms".
Her hour-long conversation with Dalton - an event titled "Love Stories" - matched the title of his latest bestselling book and the event's theme.
Dalton's book collects countless love stories from strangers, which he collated over the course of months spent on a street corner in Brisbane.
His appearances at the festival were illuminated by his childhood, reason for existence and influences.
Asked by Milsom why he writes, he replied "because I'm trying to make sense of it".
Opening night on Friday was titled: "What the world needs now: stories from the heart".
Ms Milsom said it was "incredible".
"People are still talking about it. Nardi Simpson, the Aboriginal writer and artist, sang in her language at the end. She was the last speaker. You could have heard a pin drop. People were crying."
Dalton helped open the festival - the ninth in its existence - with a panel of bestselling authors and thinkers, including Clementine Ford, Hannah Kent, Thomas Mayor and Jessie Stephens.
Dalton, who also wrote the bestselling Boy Swallows Universe, said he was thrilled to be in "the second-best city in the world". [His hometown is Brisbane]
At the opening, Milsom said the world was a "really ugly place" at the moment.
"I'm not denying it and I don't want to sugar-coat it," she said, in her opening remarks.
"What is happening overseas, what's happening to our friends up north, is confronting."
Nevertheless, she said the festival would enable people to enjoy some intelligent conversation.
"Book people are great people. They're full of passion and big ideas," she said.
As for what the world needs now, the answer was love in all forms.
"Love is the great unifying force," writer Julia Baird said on Sunday, as she spoke about how to find and nurture inner happiness
Jessie Stephens, a Sydney writer and content head of Mamamia, attended the festival on crutches and wearing a moon boot on her injured right leg.
She had a fall while hiking in remote Australia three weeks earlier.
"What the world needs is to make space for broken hearts, broken legs and broken heads," Stephens said.
"To allow for moments of wallowing. It is in our experiences of aloneness that we are most connected and most human. Love at times is easy. Heartbreak is a price we pay for it."
Love was shown in response to the festival's call for book donations for libraries and schools in Lismore, which lost everything in the floods.
They ended up with 200 boxes of books.
Ms Milsom now needs help to store the books and transport them to Lismore.
