Book bags and bookish stories

Is there such a thing as too many book bags? (No.) Especially when each one comes with its own story.

The bag from the Hobart Bookshop in Tasmania? I was living in Hobart when I wrote A Taste for It, my first novel. It was launched in the Hobart Bookshop (and most of my other novels were too, thank you, Janet and Christopher!) The Adelaide Writers’ Week 2002 bag? My first literary festival as a speaker, when my second novel Upside Down Inside Out was published. The Mount Gambier Library bag? A gift after my talk there last year, during the Hello from the Gillespies book tour. The newest bag is from the terrific Hay Festival which took place in Wales last month (I’m hoping to pick up another one at the Hay Festival Kells here in Ireland at the end of June…)