These days, no self-respecting writers festival is complete without four woke essentials; an LGBQTI+ session, a climate change group therapy session, a ‘beating up Australia’ session and an Indigenous knowledges session. I’m happy to inform you that the forthcoming Blue Mountains Writer’s Festival which will take place between 20-22 October, will be able to hold its head up high, for it has all these elements and more.
To kick things off, we have ‘Queerstories-One True Story at a Time’ in which a group of queer people tell stories from their lives and ‘shine small lights into the magnificence of the queer community.’ There is, they say ‘more to being queer than coming out and getting married.’ I don’t doubt it. We also have queer poetry in ‘Loving the Queer Self’, as poets Omar Sakr and Madison Godfrey read from their queer poems and then mull over ‘queerness, gender dis/euphoria, memory and desire in life and in literature.’
But the organisers of the Blue Mountains’ festival have really outdone themselves in the Intersectionality Olympics with a session entitled ‘Sport’s Troubled Relationship with Race, Gender and Sexuality,’ which sounds like a dodgy Australian Research Council grant dished out to the academics at the University of Sydney. In this session, queer and non -binary Ellen van Neerven will shine a light on ‘sport on this continent from a queer First Nations perspective.’
Anxious festival goers who are worried about the end of the world can head over to a climate clinic to ‘smash the doom and gloom’ with a ‘fierce hope injection’. Climate activist Claire O’Rourke will converse with Chris Darwin (great -great -grandson of Charles Darwin), presumably workshopping how Darwin will fulfil his self-proclaimed purpose in life which is to stop the global mass extinction of species.
Finally, attendees who believe that Australia is a racist hell hole will have their worst fears confirmed by David Marr’s conversation with Julia Baird about his latest book ‘Killing for Country’. Marr was shocked to discover that his forebears served with the Native Police’ and he has bravely decided to ‘confront the past of his predecessors while bringing to light the bloodied dispossession of this country.’
With few exceptions, writers festivals in this country have been hijacked by activists who are single minded in their obsession with race, gender and sexuality. There is, in essence, no difference between the Canberra Writers’ Festival, the Sydney Writers’ Festival, the Blue Mountains Writers festival or any other gathering which purports to talk about literature. You’d be better off staying home and watching the paint dry.
