James Button in Conversation

During the Writers Festival, on May 11, a few students signed up for the James Button writer’s workshop. He spoke to those students about his writing career. He is a renowned Australian journalist.

First, he started off by telling us about his early career. He explained how he was a journalist for twenty years. He wrote for The Age. Mr. Button told us many of the different, crazy experiences he had had and some of the people he had met. He told one story that I really liked:

When he was a journalist James Button wrote an article about a young woman whom was job hunting at the time. It was during a period when it was very difficult to find jobs. He wrote his story about her life in great detail and when he showed it to the woman she didn’t like it. But he still published it and a few days later she had three job offers. She was forever grateful.

 To me this story is heartwarming. It shows that journalists can really help people.

 James Button then told us about the next stage of writing in his life: he was a speech writer for Kevin Rudd, former prime minister of Australia. Because he lived in Melbourne he had to fly to Canberra and back to a lot. Mr. Button explained that he and the other speechwriters wrote the speeches only to have him go home and write his own. James Button only wrote speeches for about a year. During this career he learned a lot about his father’s life. This was because his father had worked as a politician. 

He then went on to write books. Specifically, a biography called: Speechless. This book was about his time as a speech writer and about his father and his life. This book made Mr. Button realize what his father dealt with every day; the amount of pressure placed on him roused some sad memories.

James Button gave us a lot great tips for writing such as being careful about what information you put into an article, you don’t want to expose any personal information without permission.

This was an amazing learning experience in which we learnt some valuable information. We hope to have the opportunity to do this again next year.

Thank you, James Button and all the teachers that helped put the writers’ festival together.

By Gigi Boyd and Mia Bainbridge