ANZ LitLovers LitBlog

Day 2 of the Bendigo Writers’ Festival has been excellent!

It began with a tasty breakfast of perfectly poached eggs at Harvest, and just as well we made a booking for lunch because by the time we got back there at lunchtime, the place was buzzing.  (They have a very tempting lunch menu but in the end neither of us could resist the quail with lentils.) Tonight’s dinner will be at The Dispensary and very nice it looks too…

My first session today was ‘Peace and Justice’ with Antony Lowenstein and Elaine Pearson, in a lively conversation hosted by Tasneem Chopra.  Lowenstein is a journalist who works internationally and takes a special interest in being a voice for the weak.  Most journalists, he says, claim to care about them, but are actually more interested in being a voice to power.  Pearson is an activist with Human Rights Watch which has an investigative role in exposing breaches of human rights, in over 100 countries.  (Sophie McNeill is the only investigator here in Australia so they have to prioritise areas that are under-reported.  Readers may remember that I recently reviewed her book, We Can’t Say We Didn’t Know, 2020.)

In these complementary roles, both Pearson and Lowestein aim to draw attention to governments that oppress the vulnerable.  Pearson said that outspoken criticism makes governments take notice, because they’re concerned about how they appear domestically and internationally.  So although it takes time to compile an authoritative report that can be used to hold governments to account, being publicly named in a report from HRW can force a government to change its ways in the interim.

Lowenstein’s recent book The Palestine Laboratory  How Israel Exports The Technology Of Occupation Around The World, has a chilling message.  He says that various forms of surveillance have been trialled in Israel, such facial recognition technology of every person in Palestine, and these technologies are being exported around the world.  I’ve read recently about people being photographed at supermarkets when they’re using those self-service checkouts, and I think that’s creepy. I don’t like to imagine any government having Israel’s kind of technology at its disposal…

My next session was the highlight of the festival for me: Sophie Cunningham in conversation with Jane Sullivan.  Both these authors have featured on this blog: Jane Sullivan with her novel Little People (2011) and her memoir Storytime: growing up with books (2019), and Sophie Cunningham with novels Geography (2004, shortly to be reissued as an eBook) and Bird (2008); and in nonfiction City of Trees (2019) and Warning, the story of Cyclone Tracy (2014).

This session was about Sophie’s latest book This Devastating Fever (2022) and it was such a pleasure to listen to these two friends chatting about the process of bringing the book to fruition.  I have taken copious notes but I am going to try and forget everything I heard until after I have read the novel.  But — intrigued by what Sophie said about how she preferred Leonard Woolf to Virginia at the beginning of her book but became more fond of VW as the book progressed, — I’m a little bit tempted to read the bio I have of Leonard Woolf first… but I think I’ll probably resist that and come to the book with an open-mind!

There was also a sobering discussion about Sophie’s advocacy for writers.  The fact is that sales are declining, and the ways in which authors have been able to supplement their incomes are declining too,  In the past there was work as sessional lecturers at universities, there was freelance work including reviewing, and there was journalism, but the pool of money that circulates around to support writers is smaller, and sad to say, Sophie says that writers should not expect to make a living from writing. It is distressing when they realise this and it’s important that they develop a strategic career.

My next session was called ‘Seeing and Believing’ and it featured people who work in the film industry: Sally Aitken, Phil Craig and Tosca Looby, with host Alex West.  They discussed the role of documentaries in truth-telling, and how that includes ’emotional’ truth telling, and West also asked if they thought filmmakers had more power than the authors of books.  Well, they were at a writers’ festival, so their answers were diplomatic!  But all of them were concerned about the use of film for disinformation, especially with the advent of AI.

My last session for today featured Imant Tillers again, in conversation with BWF festival director Rosemary Sorensen and director of the our much-loved Royal Botanic Gardens Tim Entwisle.  I could listen to Imant Tillers talk about the sources of his inspiration all day, (and I’ve started reading his book  Credo (Giramondo, 2022)), but it was also fascinating to hear about how Tim Entwisle grew up in houses with barren gardens to become a director of botanic gardens.  His memoir is called Evergreen: The Botanical Life of a Plant Punk.

After that it was time to visit Bendigo Book Mark and I indulged an attack of Spendyitis with a grand haul of Australian books…

I found six titles by Frank Moorhouse that I didn’t have; Roger MacDonald’s Rough Wallaby; A Lease of Summer by Jean Bedford; two by Beverley Farmer; two by Dymphna Cusack; a first edition of Vanishing Points by Thea Astley, and two by the English author Beverley Farmer. Plus, I bought a gorgeous book bag as well!

More tomorrow!