AustLit

'Writers’ festivals are strange institutions, often literature-adjacent rather than literary. Discussions tend to revolve around the idea of books rather than the books themselves: what a book means, how it was made, how the author feels about it. When we subject writers to interrogation before an audience, what is it we want from them? Too often, we act as if the book were a question and the author an answer. Such an approach is dangerous. A culture in which intellectual conversation cannot account for the complexity of literature will equally be unable to reckon with the complexity of things like language, identity, race. On Saturday, when a white Australian interviewer asked an African American writer why, given America’s vigorous policing of language and affirmative action policies, racial inequality continues to be rampant –‘I would expect that you’d find a highly racist society to have a highly racist language’ – Australia’s particular failure of cultural imagination was on display.' (Introduction)

'Lui’s recent Facebook post reflects the ironies of an arts industry that craves ‘diverse programming’ and ‘new voices’ but lacks the structural frameworks to deliver fundamental change. Everywhere you look Aboriginal writers, actors, musicians and artists are on the rise, and recent festivals like Asia TOPA illustrate the industry’s desire to showcase artists beyond the white canon. Despite these shifts, systemic racism and prejudices pervade, hidden behind marketing material with alluring POC faces splashed across posters and company webpages.' (Introduction)

'I wandered into a little theatre hosting a spoken word night – a corrugated iron shed on the banks of the Todd River in Alice Springs. It was a still, warm night. There was a foyer space to buy tinnies, and then the space opened up to rows of plastic chairs sloping toward a floodlit stage framed by heavy red curtains. It was a full house; I stood at the back. A girl in shorts and thongs said something about reciting her poem to support her brother, who was there to read his. Dylan Voller walked on stage. He had co-written a poem with his pal Zak Grieve, who is serving a twenty-year mandatory sentence for a murder that a Justice ruled the boy wasn’t even present at.' (Introduction)