SYDNEY WRITERS FESTIVAL DIRECTOR SHOWS ANOTHER SIDE

This story from the Sydney Morning Herald, 10 May.

Wendy Were, head of of the Sydney Writers' Festival, has a passion for animals that shapes her connection with literature, writes Sharon Verghis.
Wendy Were lives a life of the mind, is immersed in a world where ideas and words and abstract issues - social justice, feminism, racism, creativity - are key currency. But there's another, private world she moves in, and it's the kingdom of animals. Here, all things winged, furred, shelled and clawed hold sway.
Were, 34, a West Australian academic who was appointed head of the Sydney Writers Festival in 2006, is a lifelong animal lover - she describes this private passion as "something pure", almost an obsession. She talks passionately about animals as sentient, conscious beings, is quietly sorrowful as she recalls putting a trapped rabbit out of its misery, laughs as she recalls the personalities and quirks of pets long gone, and bonding with the famously private author J.M. Coetzee over a shared love of a stray dog. Is she a dog person or a cat person? "Both. I love the glorious, incredible love dogs provide, and I also have a great respect for catty hauteur." Add pet lambs, pigs, sheep and goats to this roll call. You suspect Were has never met a thing with claws or fur or whiskers she didn't like.

This passion has its roots in an early childhood spent on her grandfather's sheep farm in New Zealand's South Island, in a tiny town called Mataura. Were was born in north-west Western Australia but her family, including an older brother and sister, moved there when she was two weeks old (she lived there until she was six).
A key figure was her Scottish grandfather - an "ancient", benevolent, bagpipe-playing sheep farmer who managed to marry the pragmatic aspects of his profession with a deep kindness and compassion for animals. "He instilled those values in me. The fact you could develop relationships with animals, that was something that struck me as young child. I was taught never to be cruel."
The full story here............