The Camino Authors Collective

Interviewing famed Film-Maker and Camino author Bill Bennett

The Camino Authors Collective is a group set up by Amit Janco (a Canadian currently living in Bali, Indonesia), Russ Eanes (an American living in Virginia) and myself (a Sri Lanka-born Australian now living in Melbourne). Our common connection is that each of us had walked the ancient pilgrim trail, the Camino de Santiago in Spain – and had written a book about our experience.

With this being the common connection, we decided earlier this year when faced with these days of Corona isolation, to set up a series of meetings using Zoom, so that Camino aficionados from various parts of the world and in various different time zones could get together (virtually) and listen to an interview of a Camino author about their experience and the book they wrote.

The author interview would be a starting point for Questions and Answers from the listeners – and an opportunity to talk about the Camino.

The first such talk was in June, when Amit Janco spoke about her book (Un)bound Together. This was followed a week later by Russ Eanes (The Walk of a Lifetime), and then by Sanjiva Wijesinha (Strangers on the Camino), Guy Thatcher (A Journey of Days) and Susan Jagganath (The Camino Inglese).

Having established the group and ascertained the response (which has been good!), we have now decided to stage these Zoom meetings once a month. Our next meeting will be this coming weekend (Friday night 24th July 2020 for those in North America and Saturday morning 25th July for those in Australasia). We will this weekend feature famed film-maker and author Bill Bennett, who will be speaking from his home in Mudgee, NSW Australia.

I – who first met Bill at the first AusCamino Festival in Blackheath, NSW in 2017 and have since read and enjoyed his book) will have the privilege of interviewing Bill.

For August we hope to interview Patrick Gray and Justin Skeesuck (whose story features in the award winning film ‘I’ll Push You) and for September we will have American author Elaine Orabona Foster (author of In Movement There is Peace)

Join us this weekend. Details of the zoom link will be available on the Camino Authors Collective Facebook page from tomorrow. If you are unable to locate it, please email me (sanjiva.wijesinha@monash.edu) and I will send it to you.

Buen Camino!