Brisbane Writer's Festival

BWF started earlier this week, on 5^th September. I couldn’t have gone into the festival in CBD, but this morning I went to two author’s presentations: Chris Cleave at north Logan library at Underwood, and Kate Pullinger at the library at the Hyperdome. Very different authors, but both very good. 

Chris Cleave presented his latest book Everyone Brave is Forgiven. That talked about how young adults in WWII wrote to each other. He had received a wicker full of love letters written on soft, thin blue paper from his mother. The letters were between his grandparents. It got me thinking.

Knowledge or agreement will never happen if it started with people. Rape, Indigenous, disabled, unemployed: every person I have ever met has different thoughts about anything they’ve heard about. For instance, gay marriage is now to be put forward by government for a plebiscite, but I think it should be included in the law. The government doesn’t like a suggestion of a treaty, but does not spend any serious time on Indigenous people (NZ has a treaty with Maori which works very well). Sexual violence has only, in the last decade, come forward and Catholic church people are now being taken through court – but universities are far behind. Disabled and unemployed people are simply dumped into poverty, and very few people would ever know about poverty let alone fight against it (I wonder how many people actually know the increased number of unemployed and the decreased number of available jobs).

I liked the book title Everyone Brave is Forgiven, because if the government listened to where they go – which they should, because they are supposed to represent people – then many more people like Rosie Batty, Hetty Johnston and Adam Goodes would be forgiven for behaving brave. And they should be supported!

As I wrote this, I looked into a website called Australian Bravery Association to see who gets those sort of awards. I remembered an accident that my friend Anne and I drove past earlier last year. A car had gone completely off the road and landed in a tree, off the ground which was a downhill ditch. We pulled over, put my hazard indicators on and, alongside one other vehicle, got the child out of the car in the tree, kept the driver covered and called the fire department. In my orange safety vest I cut the rest of the traffic to one lane and slowed them down until the fire department arrived. I didn’t feel this was ‘bravery’, but it might have been… if we had deserved any simple ‘thank you’.

Cleave’s books include Little Bee, The Other Hand, Incendiary and Gold. I handed in one of my own first books, First Person Singular, and Kylie, the hostess, told me that she would pass it on to be entered into the library. 

Kate Pullinger, a Canadian who has lived in UK, gave a short reading from one of her latest books, Landing Gear, which was written 2 years ago. She also has Mistress of Nothing, 2009, which was set in Luxor in 1863; and Letter to an Unknown Soldier, edited by Pullinger and Neil Bartlett.

Pullinger writes in different genres, not just the same that a publisher might ask for, and her website shows much of that. Her writing was included in short stories books. At the meeting today she showed us an introduction on the screen for Inanimate Alice, a digital project for schools which was started in 2005 and Flight Paths, a networked novel.

I asked her how she was moving forward online and she talked about ePub3, the latest app. She said that Amazon and Kindle haven’t moved forward in the last 5 years, and have been taken over by apps like ePub which can be used to make a publication available on the latest smart-phones. I had a quick look at the website which talked about this – and I need to read much more! I certainly hope that I can change my Kindle to ePub 3.0.1 because it sounds a lot better.

I handed another of my first book First Person Singular there as well.

The last day, tomorrow/Sunday, has a number of free authors presenting at QAG, GOMA, the SLQ auditoriums and elsewhere there. It also includes a “philosophical bang” show to end the festival.

Philosophers-in-Residence: Closing Address Philosophers-in-Residence, Antonia Case and Professor Frederick d’Agostino, will close the show with a philosophical bang! Presented by the University of Queensland

Sunday 11 September, Maiwar Green, SLQ, 5.30pm–6.30pm, Free

If you live in Brisbane it might be very good for you to go to any of the free stuff. Have a great weekend!