Adelaide Festival’s Writers’ Week future uncertain as director Laura Kroetsch leaves

ADELAIDE Festival’s iconic Writers’ Week program faces an uncertain future after shock news that its long-serving director will depart next year.

Crowds gather at Adelaide Writers' Week.

• The 2018 Writers’ Week program

WHEN the crowds gather under the blue sails at the Pioneer Women’s Memorial Garden next March, it will be 58 years since the first Adelaide Writers’ Week.

And, as revealed by The Advertiser last Thursday, it will also be the last program delivered by director Laura Kroetsch.

The fact that Kroetsch’s departure has been announced in the absence of any clear plans for its future direction, has created a sense of unease in some quarters about possible changes to one of the most beloved events in the Adelaide Festival.

Since it began in 1960, when it was then — and remained for many years — the only writers’ festival in the country, it has been embraced by a loyal and fiercely protective public.

It also earned a reputation among writers, publishers and arts administrators as being among the best in the world.

Its status in the industry might have been eclipsed somewhat as it’s been joined by, and forced to compete for authors with, richer festivals in other capitals, but Adelaide retains its unique position as the only free event.

Former Adelaide Writers' Week director Laura Kroetsch.

Its audience and supporters see this as a key ingredient in its success, and Kroetsch has resisted pressure to move to more ticketed events, beyond a handful of author sessions held throughout the year.

Kroetsch, whose contract was not renewed earlier this year after seven years in the role, would not comment on her departure beyond a prepared statement approved by the Adelaide Festival Board.

At the launch of the Festival program at the Town Hall last month, at which Kroetsch presented, she was visibly upset at the public reception afterwards. It is understood that relations between her and the Festival management, as well co-artistic director Rachael Healey, had been strained.

In the statement, she said she was “in ways, sad to be leaving”, adding that “Adelaide Writers’ Week is a precious event, one that is utterly unique here in Australia”.

Peter Goldsworthy, the prominent writer who chaired the Writers’ Week advisory committee until it was disbanded last year, said it was vital that it remained a free event. “That’s its character. That’s what makes it one of the greatest festivals in the world,” he said.

Judy Potter, who chairs the board of Adelaide Festival, praised Kroetsch’s contribution, especially in bringing children back to Writers’ Week with the inclusion of the very popular Kids’ Weekend, boosting the nonfiction and current affairs content and bringing the event to regional audiences through live streaming to country libraries.

The entry to Adelaide Writers' Week.

However, seven years running a festival had been “a good innings” she added. Both Writers’ Week and the Festival benefited from “refreshing and looking with new eyes, so you’re constantly building on the legacy of the person before”, she said.

Writers’ Week would be “a major agenda item” when the board next convenes in three weeks, after which the position of director would be advertised.

“It’s our thinking that we will have someone on board for Writers’ Week 2019 in time for 2018, and so there will be an overlap, the same as there was with David (Sefton) and Neil (Armfield),” said Potter.

As to its shape under a new director, and whether it remained a free event, the board would be open to new ideas.

“People love that it is free, it stands up for that, it is known for that,” she said.

“Whether going forward a new director re-looks at that model, I would think a director would always want to keep large components of it free, but there are different models all around the world, and what that model is going to be, we will be guided by what that person is going to be saying.”

Adelaide writer and academic Ruth Starke, whose thesis on the history of Writers’ Week was published by Wakefield Press in 2000, was another who expressed concerns about a shift to a paid model.

“I think it would be really, really, regrettable,” she said.

Having free sessions outdoors, at which audiences are free to move from one tent to another, created a more relaxed atmosphere than those she had attended in auditoriums at other writers’ festivals interstate.

“They’re much more a theatrical performance than our sessions, which are much freer, more informal and relaxed and I think you get to see a truer side of the writers because of that,” she said. “They seem more themselves in our setting.”

Adelaide Writers’ Week

First event 1960, organised by State Librarian and Fellowship of Australian Writers, at the University of Adelaide and the State Library.

In 1976, moved to its present site at Pioneer Women’s Memorial Garden.

Became an annual event in 2012, when Laura Kroetsch, American by birth, formerly director of Wellington writers’ festival, presented her first program, after being appointed in 2011.

Succeeded Rose Wight, who departed in 2010, having presented the biennial program for 17 years.