A Day in the Life of Brisbane Writers Festival
One of my favourite parts of the year is Brisbane Writers Festival. It is an annual celebration of the Literariness of Brisbane, with over 200 events across Brisbane featuring panellists from different genres, styles and places in Australia. It is *chefs kiss*. So, I thought, I’d take you all on a journey of what my Saturday at the festival looked like.
The first panel I attended was Women, Survival, Violence and the Law featuring Jess Hill, Amani Haydar, Ellis Gunn and Andie Fox. Each panellist had their own experience of stalking, incarceration and domestic violence and I admire their vulnerability in sharing their stories to a pool of strangers. Dense discussions of domestic violence, sexual violence, gendered violence with an audience of mostly middle-aged women, with myself and few others as an exception, served as a looking glass as to how little politicians and main figureheads are doing to spark awareness of this issues. The glitches in society, the history of Me Too, the lack of accountability from the government, the ‘incelification’ of our culture to the quite violent and brazen form of misogyny in our culture today were all points touched upon, and chats that still replay in my mind while I’m writing this article. How many calls to action do we need to make until our calls are heard? Now that’s food for thought.
Next up was Politicising Culture featuring Esther Anatolitis, Julianne Schultz, and Sean Kelly which offered a very critical reflection on how political campaigns reinvent, distort and change Australian culture, a topic particularly relevant two weeks out from a federal election. As the panellists started to talk about how politics are treated like a game and how politicians forget that it’s anything but a game and the shift from being about the politics to being a performance, I imagined Scomo in a tutu dancing to swan lake… Clearly my brain processes confronting information in strange ways… I truly wish this discussion would have been recorded as I think there are many youth and adults out there that would have benefited from being in the room where it happened.
Third on my Bris Writers Fest agenda was Embracing Complexity featuring Ashley Hay, Lech Blaine, Jess Hill and Lana Lopesi. This was a panel about essays and how essay-writing has the power to present topics that are repressed, including communal and individual pain through weaving the academic, journalistic and personal. As a reader, I’ve also been appealed by the form of an essay and, as I’ve embarked through my twenties, I’ve found that I’ve consumed a plethora of essays in my yearly reading habits. It’s also a form of fiction that’s on my bucket list to one day write and I certainly felt inspired by these panellists.
My Life in Pop Culture featuring Emma Jane, Jumi Stynes, and Myles McGuire was the fourth panel I attended, which discussed the politics of different media representation, the hybrid form of popular culture and what it’s like to work in it. Whilst I felt that the McGuire was a bit unprepared in his questioning, I did love how the panellists transformed the panel into a conversation with the audience, instead of at the audience. It felt very liberating, especially after I’d spent most of my day listening to heavy and dense topics.
My last event of the evening was Let’s Talk About Love featuring Trent Dalton, Kat Mayo, Al Campbell and Kylie Scott. Now before I begin, I’d like to say two things. One is that I love love. Love is so great. Not cheesy love, like the Notebook (although I do love Mamma Mia which is quite contradictory to what I said), but real love. Secondly, I’m a massive fan of Trent Dalton. I met him at one of his discussions on his book Love Stories and gave him a copy of my book Seasons of Love, which nearly killed me with euphoria. Then, during this panel afterwards, he gave a shout out to me, after which I died the second time.
On Saturday night, one of the panellists was talking about a Eugene Inesco play and asked if anyone knew that play. To which, being a theatre major and someone who had denoted three years of her life in acting school, I started cheering. Trent Dalton was sitting five rows in front of us, and it was tiered seating. As soon as I cheered, he looked in my direction - at first with a look of confusion, followed by a look of recognition and finally, a look of joy and a friendly wave and smile. After this I died a third time. The lights in the state library auditorium were dimmed, but my blush was enough to light up the whole room.
But genuinely, such a great panel. There were questions of what is love, can we only love after experiencing something traumatic and how love affects us all differently, to name a few. I didn’t know much about Al Campbell and her debut novel, but my gosh - what a brilliant, resilient and thought-provoking woman. She wrote her novel prodimantly on the floors of a children’s hospital and poured her grief and anxiety onto pages that talk about love in one of its most devastating forms. Her book is called The Keepers. Make sure you check it out if you haven’t already.
And last but not least, I cannot write an article about the Brisbane Writers Festival without mentioning the Festival Bookshop, where I quite candidly spent most of my pay from the previous week. There’s nothing quite like buying a book and having the author sign it for you there and then. And hey, now I have ten books to add to my already quite long ‘to read’ pile.
Brisbane Writers Festival is the place to be if you’re a writer and book dork like me but also if you want to engage in critical discussions about the world we live in. See you there next year
