"The writers’ festival today is a super-sized, big business blockbuster affair, with spunkier writers, sexier topics and a crowd who will have a latte with that. It’s great for books and great for publishing, but has it lost its soul?"
So wrote literary agent Caroline Lurie 20 years ago.
Being only in our second year, we can declare we're not super-sized (and never will be because our focus is local); we're certainly not shaped by big business interests; we have no view on whether our writers are "spunkier" (but it is somewhat of a 20th century word, don't you think?); our topics are eclectic and represent a broad church of interests; and our festival barista from Hennessy Coffee assures us that most coffee afficionados today have moved on from a latte to a piccolo.
Ipso facto, we've got soul, baby!
And yes, amongst the books we feature on business culture, mental health, grief, music, sport, gender, medicine, true crime, politics, history, Australian cuisine, poetry, fiction, and more, we also have books that canvass identity and social change.
Frankly, if writers' festivals can't canvass these issues and give writers and readers free rein to discuss them, then we may as well head to America.
Manly Writers' Festival. A stage for big ideas. A place for real conversations.
Join us!
