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Writers’ Week | Adelaide Festival 2021 review

To make up for the lack of international icons, sessions turned into topical debates that heated up as the event got underway.

Adelaide Writers' Week 2021. Picture: Tony Lewis, supplied
Adelaide Writers' Week 2021. Picture: Tony Lewis, supplied

Adelaide Writers’ Week

FESTIVAL

Pioneer Women’s Memorial Garden

February 27 to March 4

Writers’ Week has defied the odds this week to be the beating heart of the Adelaide Festival.

Without the usual procession of international authors available in the flesh, director Jo Dyer and the Festival had a series of hurdles to jump, most importantly the ever-present danger of there being no Writers’ Week at all.

That danger passed. The most brilliant weather I can remember in decades of Writers’ Weeks came in its place.

It was possible to segue from reading The Advertiser at Breakfast with Papers at 8am, where speakers were ably guided by Tom Wright, and cross from the Summerhouse in Elder Park to the gardens in time for the first sessions.

Adelaide Writers' Week 2021. Picture: Tony Lewis, supplied
Adelaide Writers' Week 2021. Picture: Tony Lewis, supplied

It was enough just to be there, under the shade of the big plane trees and awnings. The chance meetings, the confluence of interstate visitors, scurrying eccentrics, striding North Adelaide bourgeois, colourful hats, intense campaigners and carousers; it is a wonder.

It’s all free and open to anyone. In today’s world that is remarkable and matches the best of SA’s egalitarian spirit, helping it stand out for more than 60 years among the rapidly expanding worldwide rollout of literary festivals.

The differences wrought by COVID – with registrations and checkerboard seating strictly observed – were balanced by a vast improvement in amplification, live streaming and the sheer number of those ubiquitous plastic chairs.

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To make up for the lack of international icons of literature, Jo Dyer took a page out of Greg Mackie’s Festival of Ideas book, and turned many of the sessions into topical debates of the type that were heating up just as the event got underway.

As the allegations of sexual harassment and rape of women in politics, the dysfunctional Murray Darling plan and the lack of action on climate change made the headlines, we had some of the best brains in the business here.

Politicians Malcolm Turnbull and Christopher Pyne, journalists like Margaret Simons, Laura Tingle and Michael West, and writers like Gabrielle Chan and Richard Beasley delivered sharp, often challenging critiques.

Adelaide Writers' Week 2021. Picture: Tony Lewis, supplied
Adelaide Writers' Week 2021. Picture: Tony Lewis, supplied

For the more literary-minded the champions from Australia were led by Richard Flanagan, of course, while Robert Dessaix was in brilliant form.

Meanwhile some of those international guests were streamed live into the park, well-served by improvements in the technology.

The book tent was no less busy than usual – just less crowded – while the catering was sufficient. If the toilets could only be less rank, all would be in harmony.

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Original URL: https://www.adelaidenow.com.au/entertainment/adelaide-festival/writers-week-adelaide-festival-2021-review/news-story/64ff4c3c0ab7f4d1a7650dc3f50ade47