Today I went to the Sydney Writers' Festival -- a great, annual event full of panels and speakers and books and writers and readers and ideas and publishers and talks and chats and intellectualism and snobbery and down-to-earth-ness and ideals and notes jotted on scraps of paper and new names and old names and damp huddled masses and excited huddled masses and eccentricity and class and thoughts and actions and nouns and verbs and the occasional interjection. It's a lot like the Festival of Faith and Writing, only without the faith, which struck me as bleak -- everyone seems to have faith on the tips of their tongues, but just can't say the word.
It was great, though -- I attended a panel discussion on the state of the American novel as well as one with the winners of the Sydney Morning Herald's award for young (under 35) writers. I also browsed the bookstore and the zine fair -- a relatively new art form (and intriguing sub-culture) of mini-magazines.
1 comment:
Sounds wonderful. Did you come away inspired to dive in with wholehearted abandon?
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