Festival Fever
by Diana Jenkins
May’s annual Sydney Writers’ Festival (SWF) brought Thinking Season to Sydney and the Blue Mountains. Artistic Director Jemma Birrell’s second program was a rich cornucopia of writers, books and ideas, spread across over 300 events and a growing cluster of venues. The 2014 festival was also blessed with picture perfect conditions, the unbroken string of cloudless, warm sunny days rivalling any of summer and perhaps contributing to the record crowds that descended upon the historic Hickson St Wharf precinct.
Yours truly was lucky enough to participate in the SWF for the second year running, although frantic preparations for my Saturday night event and inadequate childcare unfortunately laid waste to cunning (if transparent) plans to escape to the mountains for a couple of days to attend some of the Varuna events, which I’m sorely sorry to have missed. With some of the best local and international talent appearing at Varuna, Katoomba’s Carrington Hotel and the Blue Mountains Cultural Centre, the Blue Mountains program, presented by Varuna and the SWF, has established itself as a significant satellite to the Sydney events.
The formidable Tara Moss helmed the opening event, launching the Black and Blue art and poetry exhibition at the Blue Mountains Cultural Centre, featuring the work of Varuna Alumnus, poet and novelist Mark O’Flynn. Unless you’ve been hiding in a mountain cave for the past six weeks, you’ve probably heard by now that Moss’s first ever non-fiction book, The Fictional Woman, also launched at the SWF and has since generated a great deal of fascinating, important discussion about female stereotypes and damaging fictions, as well as, well, whopping great sales.
Miles Franklin Award nominee Richard Flanagan was in conversation with Geordie Williamson, chief literary critic at The Australian newspaper and Blue Mountains local, at the Carrington Hotel. They delved into Flanagan’s The Narrow Road to the Deep North, a novel that examines the fragility of life and the abject cruelty of war. The Carrington also welcomed major international authors Sandi Toksvig, Emma Donoghue and more, while Carol Major, a cherished member of Varuna’s Creative Team, talked surprising families with Alumna Sally Piper and Annah Faulkner.
Meanwhile, Varuna celebrated 25 years of launching and supporting hundreds of Australian writers. It all started with Mick Dark and the Dark family’s incredible gift to us all. Thanks to their generosity and spirit, Varuna has grown to become Australia’s esteemed and beloved National Writers’ House – what an achievement. It humbles me every time I think of it.
Back in Sydney, Varuna alumni were scattered right across the festival program, from workshops to panels to intimate conversations. Novelist and leading short story writer Tegan Bennett Daylight – fresh from her Katoomba session on the restoration and renewal of Australian writing with fellow award-winning Varuna author Charlotte Wood and Geordie Williamson – helped the great David Malouf celebrate 80 years, and also chaired Man Booker Prize-winner Eleanor Catton’s session on paradox and change. Charlotte’s other sessions included the sold out Fear & Loathing in a First Draft and talking to debut author and Miles Franklin nominee Fiona McFarlane.
Alumna Lucinda Holdforth, author of Why Manners Matter: The Case for Civilised Behaviour in a Barbarous World, rubbed shoulders and explored modern etiquette with Sandi Toksvig before discussing unsung exceptional lives with Robert Wainwright, Hamish McDonald and Lucy Hughes-Hallett. Author of Border Street, Suzanne Leal was another alumni member with official duties during the SWF, talking to Emma Donoghue about love and bloodshed as well as chairing the session on laughing in the face of adversity with Liam Ferguson, Mark Lamprell and Liam Piper.
The always entertaining Patti Miller, who’s conducted countless life-writing workshops at Varuna in the past and most recently strutted her own stuff by taking out NSW Community & Regional History Prize in the 2013 NSW Premier’s History Awards for The Mind of a Thief, joined the other big winners of the 2013 awards to unpack historical memory and the past.
Award-winning Varuna Alumna and author of the heartbreaking family memoir Boy, Lost, Kristina Olsson takes the prize for most events in a single festival, appearing at five sessions, including running the Truth, Lies and Memoir workshop, while Alumnus all-rounder, poet and performer Aden Rolfe, stayed up late at Festival Club.
My own Varuna-formed writing group was reunited in full for the first time since November 2010, the five of us delighting in each other’s company over a long, laughter filled dinner at Lotus, where we scoffed far too many sticky pot dumplings and loudly celebrated the imminent launch of Jenny’s fourth novel, Billabong Bend (Penguin), which hit bookstore shelves the following week. Jenny’s the prolific one among us, averaging a novel a year for the past three years, with bestsellers Brumby’s Run and Currawong Creek (currently a finalist in the RWA Ruby Awards) already under her belt before her latest came off the press. I don’t know how she does it, but I’ll tell you what I love: having been on this wild ride with Jenny since the beginning, when she’d just published her debut Wasp Season and hadn’t yet become ‘Jennifer Scoullar, bestselling Australian rural romance author.’ She’s an inspiration as well as a friend and we’re all silly with glee about her ongoing success.
She and Jewelene Barrile, herself the 2010 winner of the prestigious Josephine Ulrick Literature Prize, flew to Sydney from regional Victoria and Melbourne respectively especially to be part of my cheer squad – such is the bond of mutual support and friendship forged during that life-changing 2008 residency at Varuna, which at the time was a first for all of us. The other two members are ABC journalist and aspiring novelist Deborah Rice and crime-writing, e-publishing trailblazer Catherine Lee, subject of one of the most popular alumni interviews I’ve ever done here. Yep, I really hit the jackpot that long ago week – I think I’ll keep ‘em.
While the other Darklings hit the festival circuit with gusto, limited childcare and an unwritten script for my presenting gig restricted my own attendance to a just a few events this year, but boy, I’m so glad I made the effort. One highlight was Inua Ellams’ one-man play Black T-shirt Collection at Bondi Pavilion, making its debut as a festival venue. At the time, committing to this event was a big call, because it meant missing Pulitzer Prize winner Alice Walker at the Sydney Opera House, but Inua was appearing later in the week at my own event, 5x15, and after everything I’d read and heard, I was pretty keen to see him for myself before the Saturday night. He’s one rudely talented dude. Nigerian born and London based, Inua is a poet, playwright, performer and graphic artist. He’s also behind the Midnight Run, a series of whimsical overnight walking tours he started in London and now conducts in cities around the world while he’s touring. I can’t think of a better way to see a city – and clearly I’m not the only one, since the Midnight Run has developed an international following.
Well, Black T-Shirt Collection more than justified sacrificing the Alice Walker event. Inua has the most gorgeous, hypnotic voice and a gentleness that lends such compassion and heart to the occasionally traumatic and always probing terrain of his work. Alone on stage for the duration of the play, he was utterly mesmerising. This was, of course, excellent news for 5x15; I knew he was going to be good, but I didn’t know he was going to be that good. I urge you to see him perform if you ever get the chance – he’s quite unforgettable.
I also thoroughly enjoyed Literary Friendships: Benjamin and Michelle Law, during which these sharp, witty siblings discussed co-writing their cheeky ‘toilet book’ Sh*t Asian Mothers Say. It’s little wonder their individual stars keep rising at such an astonishing rate: impossibly charming, completely comfortable onstage, both radiate irreverence, confidence and cool. And they’re both still so bloody young it’s going to be enormous fun watching their separate and shared talents take full flight.
After spending most of the final day with my delighted three-year-old in the Big Top for Little People, highly recommended for all young book lovers, my husband took over and I ran to Sydney Theatre to catch Emma Donoghue’s Closing Address, which was excellent. Author of Room, which has now sold over one million copies worldwide , Emma was another of my 5x15 speakers. She was outstanding, and I loved her latest novel Frog Music, so I knew her Closing Address was going to be warm, wide-ranging and memorable. It was all of those things as well as impressively inclusive, her reflections drawing on so many of the writers she’d met and events she’d shared throughout the week. Loved it.
Finally, I’m relieved and thrilled to report that 5x15 was a big success for the second year in a row. My role is a mix of co-curating, copywriting and presenting on the night, and it’s a huge thrill to be involved. There’s an entertaining feature, I think, in all the nail-biting, behind-the-scenes action and stress of putting on a ticketed literary event at a major writers’ festival like this one, as I’m sure anyone who’s ever been involved in one can attest. The sleepless nights are something else. Indeed, I had a dream only two nights ago in which Jemma Birrell told me in no uncertain terms that I won’t be invited back – and that’s after everything went really well... imagine the hounding nightmares if the whole event had gone tits-up!
But thankfully everything was all right on the night. Sydney Theatre was absolutely abuzz, people turned up, and the five speakers sharing their unscripted stories (5x15 = 5 speakers, 15 minutes apiece) all did a superb job. Inua Ellams told the tale of the greatest break up; theatre-maker Wesley Enoch had the whole place welling up as he shared his thoughts on inheritance; British fashion commentator Colin McDowell soon had everyone laughing with his rich store of front-row recollections; Emma Donoghue’s lively fascination with women in trousers scored her a legion of new fans and Australian star of the stage and screen, the incorrigible Rake himself, Richard Roxburgh (or as he’s known to his many female fans, Foxy Roxy), positively brought down the house with his hilarious and unforgettable insights into the wiles of his capricious mad mistress, Theatre. I wish I could direct you to the podcast so you can hear them all for yourself, but it’s yet to be uploaded on the SWF site.
Do keep an eye on the SWF’s Audio Podcasts page and check out the ABC Arts archives for updated podcasts and recordings; the SWF site is still uploading many events, including 5x15, so don’t despair if you don’t immediately find what you’re looking for – it’s coming.
Closing the festival, Emma Donoghue repeated something she’d said in the Green Room the night before as we all waited for 5x15 to begin: that she’s been to festivals all over the world, and the Sydney Writers’ Festival is without peer. Well, I’m not about to argue with that – it was a phenomenal line up and the huge, wildly enthusiastic, book-buying crowds did Sydney very proud indeed. Mark your calendars now: the Sydney Writers’ Festival returns 18-24 May, 2015.