Publishing assistant Andrew Wrathall attended Australian Writers’ Week in China in March. Here, he gives us a taste of three Chinese literary festivals that hosted Australian authors in 2011.

English speaking literary festivals have sprung up all around China over the past decade. Festival guests this March included many Australian authors, who flew to Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong as part of Australian Writers’ Week, coordinated by the Australian Embassy.

Beijing

Perth author Craig Silvey and director of UWA Publishing Terri-ann White in Beijing

‘We really draw on the resources of our community to highlight what an amazing and vibrant city Beijing is,’ said  Bookworm International Literary Festival director Kadi Hughes. The festival runs during March each year within Beijing and two smaller cities, Chengdu and Suzhou.

‘We’ve been running Bookworm International Literary Festival for five years, it’s grown enormously every year. This year we have about 160 events in Beijing,’ said Alex Pearson, managing director of the festival and owner of the Bookworm Bookshop. The festival runs out of the Bookworm, which is part bookshop and part library, with books for sale and books that can be borrowed.

‘We are bigger than we have been in the past, but really sticking to the core beliefs of the festival. So we have book talks, panel discussions, writing workshops, literary eats, performance poetry, a variety of different things, and our program really focuses on a combination of amazing writers and amazing voices from around the world and also from China,’ said Hughes.

At this year’s festival Christos Tsiolkas spoke on a panel with Irish-born author Emma Donoghue on the subject of ‘taboo’; Kate Jennings and Jessica Rudd spoke on the topic of the boy’s club in big business and politics; and Craig Silvey joined Julia Leigh to talk about the Australian outback as a gothic backdrop in their literature.

Australia is one of 19 countries represented by the festival, with authors also attending from Iceland, Hungry, Poland, Wales, Scotland, Belgium and Nigeria. Pearson said she often goes abroad to other international festivals to find an international contingent of writers. The purpose of the festival is to ‘encourage the foreign community in Beijing to enjoy Chinese literature, the foreign community outside China to enjoy Chinese literature, and Chinese community here to enjoy foreign literature,’ said Pearson.

Alex Pearson talks to the festival audience with her translator

‘We have Chinese writers who you may have read in translation, whose work has been established abroad, and hopefully after this festival, more writers who will be translated and read abroad,’ said Hughes.

‘Another important part of our festival is our social enterprise, and every year we’ve been involved in international schools in Beijing, Suzhou and Chengdu, bringing our festival authors to children to share with them our celebration of literature and ideas. And this year we’re very excited to announce we have a migrant school program where a lot of our authors are going to migrant schools where they will share folk tales of their home countries and inspire children to write their own stories,’ said Hughes.

Shanghai

The view from Shanghai restaurant M on the Bund

Shanghai International Literary Festival started nine years ago at Shanghai restaurant M on the Bund. Michelle Garnaut manages the restaurant and is also the festival director.

‘It started by accident,’ said Garnaut, who recounts that a friend in Shanghai said, ‘We have a friend who’s a writer called Frank Moorhouse,’ to which Garnaut replied, ‘Wouldn’t it be fun to do that. Why don’t we get him to fly over and do that?’ Soon after, Australian author Moorhouse held a lecture called ‘the Martini in Literature’ in the restaurant’s Glamour Bar, thereby becoming the first writer of the festival. Other writers were due to attend the festival, but were scared off by the SARS outbreak. (more…)

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Melbourne Writers Festival celebrated its 25th birthday, in a year the organisation moved to a permanent home in the Wheeler Centre and the festival was held in Federation Square for a third time. The number of tickets sold increased by 10% this year for an audience of 50,000 people. Steve Grimwade, CEO and festival director said he thought ‘moving Federation Square was the best thing we ever did, it has opened us to a much larger audience, and gave far more people the chance to come to festival events’.

Keynote speaker Joss Whedon, writer of cult television series Buffy, Angel, Firefly and Dollhouse, addressed a sell-out crowd on the opening night. Chairing the session was academic Sue Turnbull, who began the session by asking, ‘How do it feel to be God?’ after which Whedon indulged in megalomaniac persona in front of an audience of adoring fans.

Stories are hung on the Hoist

‘I think we have achieved what we set out to do—engage with the written word in all possible ways.’  Grimwade said the festival ‘took some risks and extended the program—introduced more free events and opened up the programming to include music and art-based projects’.

Artist and author Shaun Tan appeared on a panel, with author Neil Gaiman—via a video feed from London—and host illustrator Andrea Innocent, presenting to an audience full of school students. The video feed failed during the start of the panel, but resumed later on. The children were restless during Tan’s interview with Innocent, but they became interested with audience participation, when Tan asked what he should draw. The event was a success, as children walked away pleased, even with the technical hiccups.

Shaun Tan, Neil Gaiman, Andrea Innocent

Many of the free events were held in The Feddish Bar, with each event packing out the venue to standing room only. Some interesting sessions at Feddish included one with Chinese author Ma Jian, and another with American author Joe Bageant. The Morning Fix, hosted by Chris Flynn at 10am in the morning, was a popular place to hear from authors with newly released books, such as R J Ellory, Jon Bauer, Benjamin Law, Angela Savage, Kate Howarth and Angelo Loukakis. The crowd also enjoyed David Halliday’s launch of his book The Bloody History of the Croissant (Arcadian) at Feddish.

‘I’d say everything we did this year was an obvious and organic growth in what we’d done in the past,’ said Grimwade. ‘What we did was really an extension to what a festival normally is, and I think we’re testing boundaries in regards to what it was and what it should be. And I think boundaries should be tested.’ (more…)