Now is not the time to turn our backs on writers’ festival debate

Thousands of people will this week converge on Adelaide for the annual writers’ festival. Attendees will be keen to meet the writers, hear their stories, and celebrate in the sunshine. But some people won’t go.

Some people are avoiding writers’ festivals, worried about getting caught up in somebody else’s politics.

Thousands of people will this week converge on Adelaide for the annual writers’ festival. That’s a wholly good thing. Attendees will be keen to meet the writers, hear their stories, and celebrate in the sunshine.

Some people won’t go, because they will be worried about getting caught up in somebody else’s politics.

Kathy Shand (R), former chair of The Sydney Writers’ Festival with Scottish crime writer Val McDermid in happier days.

The issue came to the fore this week, when the chair of the Sydney Writers’ Festival, Kathy Shand, quit her post.

I don’t know Kathy but I know she loves the Sydney Writers’ Festival. Go to her Instagram, and you’ll see it’s filled with happy pictures of festival events of yore.

She joined the board 11 years ago, and this was her second year as chair. She told friends she made the “extremely difficult” decision to quit just ahead of this year’s event, because she couldn’t stand it anymore.

It is no secret that writers’ festivals have been swamped in recent years by speakers with firm opinions on the crisis in the Middle East.

Is that fair enough?

Deborah Conway, who is Jewish, found herself invited. Photograph by Arsineh Houspian.

Well, war is a human rights tragedy for all involved.

We can all agree on that, surely?

We desperately need a Middle East solution that allows Jews, Muslims and Christians to live peacefully in the region.

Can we all agree on that (probably not! But can we least disagree with civility?)

If you’re going to put a writers’ festival on, you’re going to have people addressing the issue, which, again, is fair enough. It’s a problem from hell, and we’d all like it solved.

I guess what people say to me, when they say they don’t go to festivals anymore, is this: the Middle East is important, but is it the only thing going on in the world? No.

Would some good-hearted readers, who truly do care about human rights, like to see a few more sessions featuring crime writers?

Romance writers?

Girls having dragon adventures?

Anything to get their minds off the daily news cycle?

Of course they would.

Everyone also seems to agree that writers’ festivals have to support “freedom of expression”. And so, when I learned this week that the Sydney Writers’ Festival has invited Philippe Sands, the British barrister who represented Palestine in the International Court of Justice, to come and speak to us in May, I thought: “And so they should!”

Philippe Sands represented Palestine in the case against Israel at the International Court of Justice.

He’s a brilliant mind. He’s written several books, among them a good-old Nazi hunt.

Bring him on.

It would be good to have a speaker from Israel’s side of the argument, but it’s hard to know if any Israeli writers have been invited. The full program is still under wraps, and it won’t be released until March 13, so I guess we will find out then.

That said, I happen to know that the former editor of The Age, Michael Gawenda, is going to be there, discussing his book, My Life As A Jew.

He’s a joy to listen to. You should go see him, as well as Philippe. Because it would be a great shame if these annual celebrations of the beauty and the pleasure of reading get lost (ironically!) in a nasty war of words.

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Also in today’s Book’s pages: Jack Marxon the man who took credit for finding gold in colonial Australia; we look at the new novel based on the lives of the victims of the real-life Granny Killer; and we have an essay on desire by the most marvellous Andrea Goldsmith.

Please don’t miss the poem, “In praise of the fourth-last letter”. It’s a celebration of the letter W, which turns “me” to “we” and takes ash and cleanses it, and takes a hole and fills it, and so on. I struggled a bit with the line that said “heat to food” but then I realised, oh, heat becomes wheat. Of course. Anyway, like books themselves, it’s a real joy to read.