This year, due to some trickiness in the calendar, the days of the week have conspired to present writers festival-lovers with a tough choice: Perth or Adelaide?
Perth boasts a fantastic line-up this year. Bookseller+Publisher’s acting editor Angela Meyer (aka Literary Minded) is hosting panels with writers including Alex Miller, Eleanor Catton, David Carlin, Craig Silvey and Emily McGuire and other authors attending include Anita Heiss, Tom Cho, Kalinda Ashton, Larissa Behrendt, Don Watson, James Roy and Gail Jones, not to mention visiting authors including A C Grayling and Tom Rachmann (but no Buster Keaton, sorry). (You can read Angela’s round-up of the first day here.)
Meanwhile, the biennial Adelaide Writers Week is the traditional ‘industry’ festival, with a carefully orchestrated series of publisher parties filling the evenings, important book launches, the Visiting International Publisher program bringing many overseas publishers and rights agents to the event, and authors including Audrey Niffenegger, Peter Temple, David Malouf, Shaun Tan, Chloe Hooper, Marina Lewycka, Michelle de Kretser, Cate Kennedy, Malcolm Knox, Charlotte Wood, Markus Zusak, Andrea Levy and Irvine Welsh, among many others. (You can read Matthia’s round-up of day one here.) Of course some authors have split their attendance over both events.
Festival buffs—did you have to make a decision? Which appeals more and why? And if you’re at either festival, how are you finding it?
Fingers crossed we won’t have to decide between them again.
| Tweet |
Tags: Adelaide Festival, Adelaide Writers Week, events, Perth Writers Festival, Writers' Festivals
Why not skip both and go to the Mildura Writers Festival. It is an experience I thoroughly recommend. Many of the writers mentioned above have been guests and more. There’s wonderful food and an intimacy you don’t see at the larger festivals. Plus there’s the amazing red landscape and the Murray River — what more do you want?
Not sure I’d skip the big ones altogether Sharon, but it’s true some of the smaller regional festivals can offer something a bit more intimate. We actually spoke to Mildura Writers Festival director Helen Healy in the March issue of Bookseller+Publisher (as well as to the organiser of the Big Sky festival in Geraldton WA, Susan Smith) about the appeal of smaller events. I get the impression that if you wanted to you could do nothing but follow writers festivals around the country (and some do!).