While the tents, the stages and the crowds may have gone, Adelaide Writers Week 2024 lingers on both in public commentary and in the minds of those who were there. It certainly does in mine. Having read and reviewed many of this year’s featured books for Good Reading Magazine, I had more reason than ever to get along to the sunny lawns of the Pioneer Women’s Memorial Garden to hear them discussed. For me a book truly comes alive when I hear the author talk about it, an example of that mystical process of transference whereby the reader comes to feel in some way part of the creative process of the book. More on that later.
Strangely, given my love of books, I’m only a relatively recent convert to Writers Week, at one stage choosing to see the event as a love-in for an up-themselves gaggle of self-congratulatory fawners over the latest thing in literary fads. At some point I put this ridiculous inverse snobbism behind me and recognised that the rewards to be gained by sitting quietly with other like-minded lovers of the written word in a bucolic setting over several balmy autumn days without having to fork out a penny, was an opportunity I’d be a fool to reject.
Adelaide Writers Week (AWW) remains the only free festival of its kind in Australia and has a long and colourful history, having been held in conjunction with the Adelaide Festival of Arts since 1960. A biennial event at its inception, it was made annual in 2012, along with the Festival of Arts, thanks to an election promise by then premier Mike Rann. It began as a forum for writers only and took place at the University of Adelaide and the State Library, but its appeal was such that it soon proved impossible to exclude readers. In this form it became increasingly popular, quickly outgrew its original locations and was moved outdoors to the picturesque Pioneer Women’s Memorial Garden, where it remains.
Since its humble beginnings, AWW has evolved, matured and grown, attracting more participants and visitors each year. This year 155,000 people attended over the six days and a total of 202 writers presented at the 130 sessions. AWW is now renowned as one of the world’s foremost literary events. As evidence of that, the Adelaide Festival announced on April 18, 2024 that AWW will partner with one of the world’s largest and most famous festivals, the Hay Festival, which took place in Hay-on-Wye in Wales this May. In commenting on this, AWW’s Artistic Director, Louise Adler said “it is a privilege for Adelaide Writers’ Week – the first and only Australian festival to which Hay Festival Global has extended this invitation – to be able to showcase some of Australia’s finest writers in an event once described by former US President Bill Clinton as ‘Woodstock for the mind’.”
Over the years AWW has hosted a bevy of literary luminaries, both homegrown and international. In many ways it can be seen as a microcosm of Australia’s literary culture and its developing synergy with that of the wider world.
To get an idea how this has come about, it helps to go back to the beginning. A remarkable little book called “Writers, Readers and Rebels: Upfront and Backstage at Australia’s top Literary Festival” written by Ruth Starke and published in 1998 does just that.
The book covers the years 1960 to 1998 and it’s a veritable feast of inside information, a gossip column of who said what to whom and when, combined with a detailed A-Z index of every writer who attended in that period. A writers’ festival wouldn’t be complete without controversies, scandals and quarrels, and these are covered too. Sprinkled among the pages are priceless quotes from various illustrious characters, for example:
From Max Harris, 1966: “Australia is notoriously a country with little love for ideas and for intellectual speculation. The free-ranging and good-humoured climate of discussion at Writers’ Week is unique in the national scene.”
From R.F. Brissenden, 1978: “To the casual observer Writers’ Week may sometimes look like nothing more than a seven-day booze-up punctuated by poetry readings and literary brawls… in fact, it has developed into a remarkably significant cultural and educational event, which affects not only the production, dissemination and reception of Australian writing within Australia but also the whole relationship of local writers and their work with the world at large …”
From Helen Garner on her 1978 visit: “I owned a car but no suitcase, and I carried my clothes to Adelaide in a cardboard box. In a tent under the plane trees I gave my first reading, and delivered a stiff little paper which I read out in what someone I knew described later as ‘best reader grade six’ voice, taking up obediently the exact ten minutes I’d been permitted by the organisers’ letter.”
Since its humble beginnings, AWW has evolved, matured and grown, attracting more participants and visitors each year.
AWW is just one of a proliferation of literary festivals held around the world and while it has a long history, Cheltenham Literary Festival, formed in 1949, holds the honour of being the oldest in the world. Whatever you want to call them, Writers’ Weeks, Literary Festivals, Book Fairs, they’re big business. Lee Tulloch in an article in the May 7, 2023 edition of the Sydney Morning Herald, remarks that writers’ festivals are becoming one of the fastest growing tourist attractions. Australia hosted more than 112 festivals in 2023, compared to around 106 in the US, 300 in the UK, plus many others from Jaipur to Buenos Aires to Ubud, Istanbul, Poland and more. From small scale beginnings festivals are now major drawcards, employ permanent directors, publicists, marketers and any number of part-time staff, plus attract major corporate sponsors and substantial government funding. Festivals today use sophisticated technology and maximise their impact through websites, social media, podcasts, livestreams and more. In a 2004 article published in “Australian Author” (previously distributed by Australian Society of Authors) Caroline Lurie writes “It is a wonderful thing, marvellous and strange, this transformation of intensely private activities – reading and writing – into an industry worth thousands, maybe millions, depending on how you count the money.”
Opinions about literary festivals tend to be polarised, which is often the case where culture and commercialism come head to head. Critics complain that they’re elitist, that they pander too much to the book marketing machine, or that they’ve strayed too far into the arena of politics. Afficionados, on the other hand, swear by the camaraderie, the connections, the engagement and the sweeping bonhomie that’s generated by a gathering of literary like-minded souls. On balance however, it seems the pros outweigh the cons (which may be because those who love literary festivals write about them more passionately than those who don’t). My research reveals that while the benefits are many and varied, they can largely be summed up under the heading connection, which takes a number of obvious and not so obvious forms.
Lovers of writers' festivals swear by the camaraderie, the connections, the engagement and the sweeping bonhomie that's generated by a gathering of literary like-minded souls.
Howard Jacobson with his trademark wit describes them in a 2017 article in the Guardian as follows: “University had been a letdown. No Gitanes-fuelled têtes-à-têtes with Sartre and de Beauvoir (with me as Camus) on the Boulevard Saint-Germain; no absinthe nights talking symbolism with Baudelaire and Rimbaud; just cycling to lectures in the rain and being in bed with a hot chocolate by 11pm. Now at last, at a pub in Hay, I was exchanging ideas with men and women of letters for whom the impersonal discussion of a line of poetry was very heaven. For the writer, it’s a revelation to see your words materialise and wing their way across a room, giving that disinterested pleasure that’s the only justification for writing in the first place.”
Nora Piehl writes on the website WBUR in an article titled “Why Literary Festivals Matter“, “A book festival is like that spark of recognition writ large, as readers from all over get downright giddy when they discover that there are hundreds, if not thousands, of other people who share their passion for a great book.”
There’s a lovely quote by Marion Halligan in Ruth Starke’s book on why readers go to writers’ festivals: “people hope that somehow by going along … they’re going to get some insight into a creative process that’s important to them. Writing’s the one art form that everybody feels they can do. People know they can’t draw or sing. But they don’t know they can’t write. It’s a process they want to be part of. It’s also language: we go along and look at writers because these are people who are doing the most interesting thing you can with this language we’ve all got and we want to see how they do it. We think that some magic will rub off on us.”
Magic is certainly at work and nowhere more so than among those most avid devotees of writers’ festivals – aspiring writers (those who don’t know they can’t write). Convinced there’s a secret to writing a publishable book and the key to it lies in the words of the authors they’ve come to hear, they gather like worshippers at a shrine, or kids at Father Christmas’s knee. For them it’s a heady mix of fantasy, inspiration and motivation. What wannabe writer doesn’t indulge in fevered dreams of being on stage themselves one day, extrapolating intelligently on the finer points of their work, reading meaningful passages, graciously accepting applause and all the rest of it? (I know all this from personal experience lest other aspiring writers think I’m being scornful!)
An article called “Litfests, the Pros and Cons” published on the Business Standard website puts it brilliantly: “It can be seen to dawn on the faces of younger writers, as they listen to the Atwoods, the Toibins, and the Karnads and decide that someday they will write with as much pleasure, as much power and as much unshakeable integrity in their work. If the big tents of literary festivals yielded only this gift, they would still be priceless.”
Tom Krause, also quoted in Ruth Starke’s book, describes the appeal of literary festivals this way: “Writers Week reminds me of Holden Caulfield in Salinger’s ‘The Catcher in the Rye’ saying the book he read was so good he wished that he could ring up the author and talk to him about it.”
At writers’ festivals fans can do better. We can talk to the author in person. We can have our book signed, even take a selfie with the writer. If he or she is world famous, there can be no greater thrill. However to bask in the stardust of fame, even so briefly, can be conducive to delusions of literary superpowers. As happened to me one year when Alan Hollinghurst was a guest. I’d recently read his 2004 Booker Prize winning book “The Line of Beauty“, one that showcases better than any other his genius for skewering the subtle interplay of undercurrents among the privileged while dining, drinking and glamming it up at grand occasions. At the time I was attempting to write a dinner party scene of my own where romantic undercurrents vied with ones of a baser nature. How to capture the subtle interplays between mouthfuls and glassfuls was proving deeply problematic to me. So, book in hand at the head of the signing queue, I asked the great man what his secret was. He chuckled modestly and said it was just a matter of becoming a keen observer of human behaviour which, in the headiness of the moment, seemed to me a no-brainer. Primed with confidence I returned to the keyboard, only to end up with my hapless protagonist slurping oysters, sipping wine and chatting up a romantic interest seemingly all at the same time.
When you’ve loved a book there’s no greater pleasure than to come face to face with its author, to discover how this book came about and hear about the pleasures and pains of writing it. Even seated rows back behind a pillar in a packed tent with nothing but a view of the author’s elbow, an intimate connection is somehow forged. When a writer’s dreams, ideas and passions mesh with ours, we become giddy with recognition. Our vague musings must have value because someone else has them too.
When you've loved a book, there's no greater pleasure than to come face to face with its author, to discover how this book came about and hear about the pleasures and pains of writing it.
But it’s not all unalloyed joy. Starting out as solely celebrations of books and writing, festivals in recent years have expanded to reflect cultural, social and political transformations happening in the wider world. In an article published in 2017 in Overland, Dr Millicent Weber, a lecturer in English with the ANU School of Literature, Languages and Linguistics, points out “Literary festivals are complex beasts. They’re simultaneously social spaces, cultural projects and political platforms as well as providers of entertainment, drivers of tourist revenue and exercises in government branding”.
Caroline Lurie writes in her previously mentioned article “the writers’ festival today is a super-sized, big business blockbuster affair, with spunkier writers, sexier topics and a crowd who will have a latte with that. It’s great for books and great for publishing, but has it lost its soul?”, a question that’s even more relevant today than in 2004 when the article was written. Lost its soul is another way of saying succumbed to commercial prerogatives. When the invisible hand of capitalism exerts too much pressure on a writers’ festival, the outcome will be not only a loss of soul but a loss of opportunities for unbiased intellectual debate.
Or, as Jerath Head puts it in an article in Overland that looks at the politics of writers’ festivals”in recent years [writers’ festivals] appear to have become more politicised, more contested spaces exemplary of the tension that results when a ‘cultural project’, with presumed egalitarian aims, has a light shone on it by the market model it operates on … .”
Alex Clark writing in The Guardian in 2016 notes that both festival organisers and the book publishing world are aware that the real drivers of their revenue are the “high-selling titles” where sales are aggressively boosted by extravagant marketing and publicity campaigns. In many cases this means a disproportionate emphasis on bestselling or celebrity writers, potentially at the expense of new or lesser-known writers, whose works challenge the status quo or invite readers to engage with new styles of narrative.
When the invisible hand of capitalism exerts too much pressure on a writers' festival, the outcome will be not only a loss of soul but a loss of opportunities for unbiased intellectual debate.
If writers’ festivals become monopolised by celebrities, politicians and others better known for their high profiles than for their high art, their primary aim of cultivating incisive and persuasive literary and intellectual debate will be undermined.
The 2018 Melbourne Writers Festival was a case in point when Artistic Director Marieke Hardy created a festival that was top heavy with theatre, performance and music. Hardy was quoted in an interview as saying she wanted a “kind” festival, “a place where people could hug each other“. She ‘d designed her festival, she told the ABC’s Virginia Trioli, with the goal of avoiding putting more “hurt” into the world. According to an article in The Guardian, the program included, among other things, “Australia’s trusted spiritual medium” Mitchell Coombes discussing life after death, many sessions on animals, including the sex life of sea creatures and a remembrance ceremony for dead pets conducted by pet funeral director, Caroline Higgins. An envelope-pushing approach admittedly and I’ve got nothing against remembrance ceremonies for pets which I think is a marvelous idea) but it does sit uncomfortably on the borderline between writers’ festival and carnival.
It’s taken for granted that speakers at today’s writers’ festivals, regardless of their subject, will be skilled presenters – articulate, entertaining, able to field awkward questions and even better generate laughs. But author to performer isn’t necessarily a natural progression, particularly in the case of the reclusive author. It can be argued that we’ve gone too far, that festivals are becoming public spectacles and authors performers rather than writers.
Amitav Ghosh, in an article called “Festivals and Freedom“, recalls how it used to be. “Through the last century the relationship between readers and writers was largely impersonal. The reader related in the first instance to a book, not to its writer; and writers, for their part, did not confront their audience directly in the manner of musicians, singers, actors and so on. This was, I think, one of the reasons why writers were able to take greater risks in hurling defiance at society at large.” Writers “hurling defence at society at large” is an interesting concept which arguably still applies to some.
Nevertheless, the expectation that a writer will also be an effective presenter has been around for a while, as observed by Graham Rowlands, quoted in Ruth Starke’s book, who had this to say about some guest poets in 1972: “the reality was that when they got up to read you just wanted to go home. Ian Mudie was quite a good reader of his poems but some of the people he brought along were just appalling. They couldn’t perform in public at all … these chicken farmers got up on stage and said they were bushies from outback and ran chooks and this sort of stuff.”
Today’s festival goer not only expects professional presenters but also expects them to be somewhat more prestigious than chicken farming poets. As Caroline Lurie writes, “audiences want to hear and see the latest Booker winner, the spunky author whose sexy novel was made into a film, the new black chick on the international circuit.” Caro Llewellyn, a director of two Sydney Writers’ Festivals, is quoted as saying “we have to be sure that a writer coming to the festival can stand up in front of from anywhere up to 1600 people and talk about their work in an engaging way.”
Today, when publishers encourage authors to take a proactive role in self-promotion, those who present well will be in greater demand, as presumably will their books. The days of writing a book, getting it published and then waiting for the bookshop cash registers to ring are long gone. Authors must be prepared to engage and connect with their readers and presenting at writers’ festivals is an important part of this.
There's no doubt that guests at today's writers' festivals, regardless of their subject, are expected to be skilled presenters - articulate, entertaining, able to field awkward questions and even better generate laughs.
Festivals are particularly criticised for being elitist. Anyone who’s been to a writers’ festival can’t fail to have noticed that the wealthy, well-educated and white are overrepresented. An invisible cultural barrier that excludes the less privileged appears to prevail.
Amrita Shah writing in an article in 2017 says “the prioritisation of the needs of the global traveller (and also, to some extent, of the globally travelled local elite) has led to an undermining of inclusiveness and democratic processes.” She goes on to say “Festival websites convey a perception of festivals as a benign force providing space for serious discussion and touting free access as an egalitarian measure,” a perception which she argues is misleading. Cultural events, she claims, exclude “the poor, the stigmatised and the eccentric.” While written from the perspective of the Indian experience, her observations are arguably valid for writers’ festivals in general.
In 2018 the ANU published an interview with Dr Millicent Weber, mentioned above, in connection with her book “Literary Festivals and Contemporary Book Culture” in which she says “Literary festivals are implicated in wider patterns of unequal access to cultural participation. … they’re disproportionately attended by people of privileged backgrounds … But … the same can be said of many cultural sites, for example galleries or museums.” This shouldn’t, she says, be taken as proof that there’s a problem with cultural sites but rather evidence of the unequal society in which we live, wherein access to cultural participation is determined by social and demographic factors well beyond the sphere of influence of festival organisers. Festival organisers would be well aware of this issue, but changing entrenched inequality in any context will always be a long-haul project.
Syima Aslam, Bradford Literature Festival CEO, writing in a 2023 article does however suggest some measures festival organisers could adopt. For example “a genuine openness to diversity of thought and experience, a commitment to providing access to those without financial means, and the willingness to put in the effort to make traditionally marginalised communities feel welcomed in spaces they perceive as not intended for them. “
Festival organisers however shouldn’t despair. We’ve progressed dramatically from the way things were in 1959. Sir Lloyd Dumas is quoted in Ruth Starke’s book on the subject of encouraging greater inclusiveness, as follows: “Personally, I am in favour of bringing the New Australians into the picture with some folk dancing somewhere at some stage”. It’s unlikely his suggestion was taken up.
Cultural events are and have always been exclusionary of a part of the population, and although writers' festivals are somewhat of a last bastion in this regard, it's crucial that organisers work towards expanding inclusiveness.
In recent years political controversies associated with writers’ festivals have ousted other topics and consumed a disproportionate amount of media attention. Storms have raged around the inclusion of writers perceived to be inappropriate, marginalising or otherwise politically incorrect. Certain critics have gone so far as to accuse Australian writers’ festivals of being “a leftist stack.” Their argument is that rather than being “balanced”, writers’ festivals are promoting particular political ideologies at the expense of others. Criticisms that conservative views are ignored or that taxpayers are being hoodwinked because their money is being freely spent promoting views with which they may not agree have become tediously predictable. What’s happened to the idea of the writers’ festival as a place for informed intellectual debate? An article on the website of Somerset Storyfest, which examines the important role literary festivals play in the broader community, notes that “As an arena of intellectual debate, a platform to express opinions – literary, political, and otherwise – and a place where an increasingly varied group of people congregate, it is only natural that literary festivals have a role in politics too. As political platforms, writers’ festivals give attendees the opportunity to engage with thoughtful, mediated conversations and to learn new ideas from fresh, often authentic sources.”
In many cases it’s the inflammatory nature of media comment rather than writers’ festival programming that’s the most troubling, with for example, Caroline Overington writing in the February 17, 2024 edition of “The Australian” an article headlined “Should Jews Start Wearing Yellow Stars Again?”
Controversy is an intrinsic part of literary festivals and a large part of their appeal, not to mention a publicity bonus, and that’s always been the case. That it’s become so rancorous in recent years is a reflection of turbulent world events such as the Palestinian Israeli war, where public opinion has become intensely factionalised. Alexandra Dane, in an article published on 25 March 2024 in Kill Your Darlings, describes the arts sector as “beginning to bifurcate along sectarian lines”.
Reams of often sensationalist commentary flooded the media preceding, during and after AWW in both 2023 and again this year. Sadly, this hasn’t been confined to Adelaide. Other Australian writers’ festivals have followed the same pattern with the fallout creating a noxious climate where resignations of festival staff, funding and sponsorship withdrawals, participant cancellations, professional disputes and squabbles have taken over the headlines. Not only is the authenticity of cultural debate being threatened, but the spectre of censorship has begun to rear its head. As SA Premier Peter Malinauskas said on the ABC News at the time of the 2023 AWW when asked whether the SA Government would consider withdrawing funding from the event, “There is a profound responsibility on governments, particularly in our democratic system, to ensure freedom of speech isn’t compromised by cancel culture, every time something bobs up that we might disagree with.” He went on to say that if governments interfere because they don’t like the views expressed, it sets a dangerous precedent that “takes us down a path to … Putin’s Russia”.
Lovers of writers' festivals swear by the camaraderie, the connections, the engagement and the sweeping bonhomie that's generated by a gathering of literary like-minded souls.
An article in the Guardian dated 12 March 2023 quotes Festival Director Louise Adler as saying “People are free to deeply object. They don’t have to come. Or come, and you don’t need to agree with what people think.” Former Attorney-General George Brandis, also quoted in the article, commented “This is the test of whether you believe in a civil and free society; that is whether you’re prepared to respect the right of others to have views you find profoundly objectionable.” Political sensitivities should not determine what can and cannot be discussed.
Nevertheless, they continue to do so. The recent Melbourne Writers’ Festival, for example, for the first time banned Q&A sessions. According to an article by Caroline Overington in the 4 May edition of “The Weekend Australian”, the decision was made as a result of claims that anti-Israel groups were pressuring festival organisers to cancel events featuring Jewish writers. Overington quoted an unnamed moderator who said “The way I read it, no audience member at any session gets the chance to ask anything of any writer in case somebody brings up Palestine.” Whatever the justification, the move effectively bans audience participation, a traditional highlight of writers’ festivals. So much also for engagement and connection. It’s only a short step from here to a climate where festival goers are welcome only if they keep their mouths shut.
Writing in The Sydney Morning Herald 24 February edition, Chip Le Grand quotes Louise Adler as saying “If writers’ festivals, like universities and the media, cannot with care and considered approach engage with complex and contentious issues, then we have a problem in civil society.”
We in Adelaide are fortunate to have in Louise Adler an advocate for courageous art who’s not cowed by incendiary public commentary. As Richard Flanagan a guest at this year’s AWW said, “last year she [Louise Adler] withstood a fire storm of appalling criticism from the very powerful about a very simple issue, the right of writers to speak. And as a writer, I so admired her unflinching courage in the face of that fury. And I’m glad that she prevailed.” And we, as festival goers, are also very glad that she prevailed.
We in Adelaide are fortunate to have in Louise Adler an advocate for courageous art who's not cowed by incendiary public commentary.
Writers’ festivals today are beset by a myriad of problems – ethical, philosophical, ideological and not least logistical. As Alex Cark writes in the Guardian article referred to above, “the background emotional atmosphere of a literary festival swings between the euphoria that follows a successful event and the suppressed panic of a thousand disasters in waiting: an author stuck in traffic, a missing consignment of books; an ailing sound system; a furious punter; and that most grave of prospects, a wine drought in the green room.”
All that aside, writers’ festivals are crucial events for everyone interested in books and what’s going on in our increasingly uneasy world. For both writers and readers, it’s one week in the year when you can legitimately disappear down a rabbit hole and emerge renewed, revitalised and enriched by the cross-fertilisation of ideas that flow as liberally as the wine in the green room. Where there’s a coming together of some of the best minds in contemporary literary culture, there will always be contention and controversy, as there should be. This is how public debate operates, through challenging minds and daring to venture beyond the mainstream.
But when vested interests (whether that be money, politics, governments or the media) begin to exert power over events that should be self-determining, writers’ festivals run the risk of becoming mere circuses to entertain the masses.
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