the sydney writers' festival

As aforementioned, the Sydney Writers' Festival (abbreviated SWF which just seems awfully "single white female" of them, but never mind) is currently on, so what can I do but write about it?  Here goes.

Let me preface by saying there's still 2 days of the festival but I am thoroughly writered out.  I dashed out of work both Thursday and Friday this week in time to make a 2:30 session.  The problem with Thursday was that I actually got there at roughly 2:32, which is clearly much too late to get into a session, by about 30 minutes.

If there is one thing this festival has got going for it, it's punctuality.  Really.  You wouldn't think writers would be so highly regimented, but their orange-shirted helpers certainly are.  It's really pretty highly structured all around, which is necessary considering there's roughly lots and lots of lots people there.  So many lots of people in fact that you really do have to start standing in line about half an hour before a session if you actually want to get in and even then, as we'll see later, it's a still a bit of a gamble.

So assuming you arrive on time at 2 for a 2:30 panel discussion (Sigh.  Why can I, even after nearly a decade, still not get "To be early is to be on time, to be on time is to be late, and to be late is to miss the bus" out of my head from marching band?  Oddly enough "The form -- is always the first priority.  Constantly correct the form -- by visually guiding off of others.  Stay in the form -- regardless of your plotted position." is still pretty stuck in there as well, just not quite as apropos in this paragraph.), you jump in line (hopefully the right one; there are many to choose from) and proceed to stand there and wait in precisely the same spot for a good 25 minutes.  I have yet to understand why, but the festival is clearly under the impression that too many writers sitting in one auditorium for any longer than five minutes before a session starts is bound to create more trouble than they're inclined to deal with.  Thus, at 2:25 the line will move forward orderly and at 2:30 on the dot the host will commence the program.  At exactly 3:15 questions will begin being taken, at at 3:30 the host will announce, regardless of what else is simultaneously being said, that the session has now concluded and the presenter will be in the book shop signing copies in 10 minutes.  Then everyone files dutifully out.

This is all well and good as long as you actually A. get in B. to the right session and C. it's good, and as long as D. you stop at the restroom you pass on the way out.  This is vital.  Whatever you do, do not make the dastardly error I committed by listening to the "helpful" lady who said there were more restrooms "just around the corner" and they had shorter lines.  I can only assume she mean the port-a-potties, which for obvious reasons I never remotely have considered using.

Unfortunately, the area "just around the corner" was also outside of the area I'd queued for 30 minutes to get into and there was no way there were letting me back in willy-nilly.  Or really at. all. period.  So, I spent the next ten minutes asking the normally extremely helpful orange shirted individuals where real restrooms could be found and was increasingly told there weren't any, sorry, deal with it.  Obviously this would not do.  Finally I found one orange shirted woman whose eyes lit up with understanding.  She clearly did not use port-a-potties either, and told me it was a great secret, but if I went to shhh-shhh-shhh-shhh I could find real restrooms.  I did, and I have kept her secret.  But if you're a girl and you're desperate, ask and I'll tell you, too.  Deal?

So anyway, back to Thursday 2:32 pm.  There I was distinctly not in the highly scintillating "Reading Is Overrated" (humph.  the session certainly wasn't.) I wanted to be in but in whatever was available and what I determined later must have been the quintessentially Australianly titled "Home and Away."  I surmised fairly quickly that the woman speaking (it was two speakers chatting to each other while the audience listened more or less intently in) was of Aboriginal descent, which I found reasonably exciting as I am currently reading My Place by Sally Morgan, another Aboriginal writer.  I even harbored a fanciful little notion that, perhaps, just perhaps, I had inadvertently stumbled in on Sally Morgan (Hey, I'd also just seen a photo and heard mention that Markus Zusak, author of the last book I read, The Book Thief, was also around.  Stranger things have happened, and this, after all, was a writers' festival for goodness sake.).  Unfortunately, I am convinced my intrinsic authorial tendencies had convinced me before long that this woman honestly had an entirely different voice to Sally (who, for the record, could be dead for all I know), and, in the final blow, the program informed me that her name was actually Marcia Langton.  Come to think of it, perhaps her co-speaker called her Marcia once or twice, too, which would have also been highly suspect had she really been a Sally.  The program, informative tome that it is, went on to inform me that,

"Two long-time friends, indigenous activist Marcia Langton and writer Peter Robb, talk about matters of race and culture in contemporary Australia."

And talk they did.  For their full 45 minutes, and most of the question time too.  It was all reasonably interesting, but perhaps a bit more interesting had you actually lived it all yourself, as they clearly had.  I'm sure it was very intelligent and cultured and informative, but I was a bit sleepy.  It was really just a few brows too high for my post-IELTS teaching afternoon lull.

In any event, once I was caught up on every activist buzzword of the 1970s and how to rearrange them varying orders to form 45 minutes worth of highly intelligent sentences, I was happy enough to meander off to my second session of the afternoon:  "Cracking the Code:  the Art of Editing."

This program was great.  It was really fun and down-to-earth and there was an American guy on the panel.  Actually there was a British guy, an American guy and an Australian guy, so it was clearly some sort of joke waiting to happen, but I never quite got the punchline.  I really wanted to ask about cultural differences they saw between writers and readers and publishers and editors in their respective countries, but if you want to get a word in edgewise in the question time you have to be an absolute vulture.  Alas for you, I'm not.

After that, I had a few errands to run but then came back about 8:30 to catch The Chaser's 9 pm performance.  Unfortunately, I had forgotten the golden rule of arriving at least an hour before any show you actually really, really want to see.

The Chaser, for the unaware, is an Australian satirical group that performs for television and other such outlets.  They sometimes pull crazy stunts, offend the public and generally entertain and amuse in a potentially thought-provoking way.  Needless to say, the waiting area was packed.

I dutifully waited in (the of course not moving until 5 minutes before) line for my 35 minutes or so, occasionally with staff members walking down and saying, "you know, if you just want to go home, you'll probably get to see the show faster finding something of theirs on YouTube," or something roughly along those lines.  I persevered until 9, then gave up.  I was about 30th in a line of 100-plus.

Friday I was exhausted, but managed to fit in a full day of writerly goings-on.  I started at 2:30 (in line promptly at 2) with "When Is a Children's Book Not a Children's Book?," which was a great discussion about the blurring of the "young adult" and "adult" genres of fiction, as well as the "crossover" book which pulls readership from both.  For instance, Harry Potter as a children's-book-turned-adult-novel or The Book Thief as an adult-novel-turned-young-adult-fiction.  Or something like that.  It's all a bit fuzzy, really.

The thing they didn't mention that I really wanted them to was how, when I was a kid, all the books I read that were "good" (i.e., critically acclaimed, Newbery honor sorts) I really didn't like.  I enjoyed some "commercial" (what a lovely euphemism they coined) books and some "adult" fiction, but "young adult" classics such as Island of the Blue Dolphins, Hatchet, Bridge to Terebithia or Sarah, Plain and Tall were not at all my cup of tea.  Boggles me to this day -- when, for the record, I still don't like any of them.

After defining genres, I moseyed off to the Club Theatre at Pier 2/3 where I decided to try to get a seat for the rest of the day, seeing as everything else I wanted to see was there -- most importantly, The Chaser at 9 pm again Friday night.

The afternoon event was not nearly as popular as The Chaser and I was able to meander quietly in halfway through and sit down wherever I felt so inclined.  I found myself a good seat and cosyed up to "Conversations with Richard Fidler:  Daniel Swift's Bomber County," which discerning readers of this blog may realize is not generally in line with my life interests, broadly speaking.  Really, I'm not much of a bomber.  Shocking, I know.

The chat was actually reasonably interesting -- about Mr. Swift's grandfather who was a WWII pilot who got shot down.  I'm not exactly sure where the whole "this-is-a-writers'-festival" thing came into play for this one, but oh well.  Writing, history, it's all "arts," hey?

After the enlightening conversation with Mr. Swift, I had an hour or so to kill in the Club theatre before the next scheduled event, a taping of the radio show "Thank God It's Friday."  I found myself chatting to the two women I was sharing a small table with and we had a very happy, friendly chat for quite some time until my friend Melissa was able to join us moments before the show went on air.

It was really funny -- a panel of three humorists (with highly prepared, but thus also highly humorous, texts to share), a host and a couple guests appearances (can it be an "appearance" on radio?).  I thoroughly enjoyed it, and was excited to learn they actually broadcast every Friday from Ultimo and listeners can always come for free.  They were thrilled to have such a huge crowd, and we were thrilled to be there.

After that, Melissa and I thought we were set to keep camping out in the Club Theatre, but unfortunately, they cleared the whole place out for "tidying" or something to that effect.  It was most distressing, but we did seize the moment to find some real restrooms and grab a bite to eat.  The queue to get back in was already quite long for the 7 pm (Melissa-picked-it-not-me!) "Erotic Fan Fiction" readings prior to the 9 pm Chaser.  We waited our half hour, then did find again quite reasonable seats we were again grateful for.

The fan fiction ended up being really quite good.  Some of it was rather raunchy (er, erotic), but I suppose that was to be expected given the title.  Basically each of five readers took a turn of about 15 minutes reading a short story they'd written.  I discovered at the end when I consulted Melissa and two of them would have been hugely more entertaining to me had I had any idea who the famous people being referenced in them were.

Hey, cut me some slack.  They were famous Australians.

So the first guy wrote this story about two older movie critics who have a famous TV show.  It sounded a bit like Siskel and Ebert to me, except there was one guy and one woman who, according to the fan fiction, enjoyed making the show a bit more than they were contractually obligated to.

The second was also hysterical if you were an Australian and familiar with the (former?) cast of "Hey Hey It's Saturday."  While I'd heard the show existed, I fear much of the humor was lost on me, though I enjoyed the story for what it was.

The third story was by far my favorite:  it was written by an Australian woman named Elmo, which I found curious mostly because I had also recently met a young Asian guy also named Elmo.  In any event, she had the terribly creative idea of personifying Google.  What's more, Google fell in love with her protagonist (after all, he already knew everything about her, and googled whatever he didn't).  It was extremely funny and well written -- they type you wish you'd thought of writing first, minus the blatantly colorful language and descriptions.

The fourth story was a bit different -- if I understood correctly, someone else had written it and given it to the man it was written about to read for the first time in front of this audience.  Or possibly that was all a huge funny ploy.  I'm really not quite sure.  It was supposed to be about an encountered he'd had in the ever-elusive "industry," etc.  It was funny in parts, but I also wouldn't be surprised if I missed a major element or two there as well.

The final story contained characters I actually recognized -- a whole host of pop princesses.  Not (honestly!) that I am at all a pop princess type, but at least I know who Lady Gaga and Beyonce are.  It was also humorously well done.

After the intentionally erotic aspect of the night drew to a close, a few people left and a few more (thankfully including Melissa's boyfriend Joe) were let in to take their precious places in time for The Chaser.

It was worth the afternoon's effort -- a funny series of interviews, sketches, etc.  They interviewed two Jewish writers at the festival -- an old guy who'd just won the Booker prize and presumably is Quite Good, and a young woman who was presumably clearly troubled in some significant way she wrote elegantly about, as determined by her repeated references to her psychologist couch experiences and the drowning Ophelia sort of cover her book had.

They also did a short highlight commentary of the royal wedding (there was quite the hullabaloo here when Her Majesty Herself decided that The Chaser was not allowed to broadcast live commentary of the wedding; it seemed that their feelings had been rather hurt), a history lesson that thankfully didn't offend too much and then they got two people up to tell stories in 5 minutes:  one true and one false.  The audience was supposed to guess which was which.  All in all, it would have been much harder had the "false" storyteller not blatantly stolen the entire premise of her story directly from O. Henri's "The Gift of the Magi," switching only the long hair from the woman to the man and updating the setting to modern Sydney.  It was clever, but hardly likely to fool many (though my Australian friends seemed less familiar with O. Henri) at, of all places, a writers' festival.  It was fun, though.

And that's that!  I think I've written quite enough about the festival now -- as i said, it's on today and tomorrow as well, and well worth going early to.  As for me, I'm all written out.

The end.