Brisbane Writers Festival

If you follow me on Twitter or Instagram you probably know that I was at the Brisbane Writers Festival last week which, early mornings excepted, was a whole pile of fun! This was my third year as a volunteer, but because I wasn't up in the green room as I often am, I had a lot more opportunities to see a the panels, talks and meet a wider range of volunteers. Rather than go into any kind of boring blow by blow account here, I'm going to post a few highlights (and controversies) and share some of the excitement around!

*Germaine Greer was at the festival and delivered the opening address. Just quickly, can I mention how freaking irrelevant this woman has become? A couple of weeks ago she appeared on a political/news panel show and criticised our PM based on her pant suits (seriously? What happened to feminism?) and during her opening address she criticised Queensland literacy levels (which would have been fine if the stats were actually correct), attacked the Word Play (kids section of BWF) because "kids should be taught to read at school" (even though that is completely contradictory to what she moaned about re: literacy) and attacked the festival in terms of content, style and the people who attend. Ugh, seriously. What a freaking dampener.

*The Word Play event was phenomenal, so sad that I didn't live in Brisbane as a kid!! Andy Griffiths, John Boyne (who was LOVELY!), Nick Earls, and so many more! All the kids were extremely polite, and most of them drew little pictures and fan letters to give to the authors when they lined up at the signing table! Super cute!

*John De Graff is an amazing, intelligent and lovely man. He was one of the few adult events during the week (it's usually mostly the wordplay events) and happily signed dozens of exercise books for kids who had no idea who he was and possibly never will.

*The Pineapple lounge was a huge success! Cocktails, live music, authors delivering stories about life and love and what not. I know people often joke about authors drinking a lot but seriously, they drink a lot. So do readers apparently.

*Anita Heiss, Witi Ihimaera, Tiga Bayles and Dylan Coleman were fantastic in 'The All Blacks' panel. Probably my favourite of the week.

*PAUL MCDERMOTT WAS SO CLOSE TO ME I COULD HAVE REACHED OUT AND RUFFLED HIS HAIR!

*That'll mean nothing to you unless you're from Australia most likely. But rest assured he's amazing.

*This was my first time with a camera phone so I made the most of taking photos at every opportunity, although I felt a little dodgy taking them during talks and panels so most ended up blurry and crappy and not worth sharing. But a couple were OK, and popped up on my twitter, facebook and tumblr pages.

*Photos: 1. John Boyne (author of The Boy in the Striped Pajamas during a Word Play event), 2. The BWF book heart sculpture, so many photos were taken with it! 3. Looking up at the State Library late one night, 4. The front facade of the State Library one night, 5. People enjoying the Pinapple Lounge, 6. Katherine Battersby (author of Squish Rabbit) having a cosy chat with fans and amateur authors.

Brisbane Writers Festival...It's going to be HUGE!

Oh my goodness guys! The Brisbane Writers Festival has released the 2011 program and it is BIG! We sometimes fall beneath Sydney and Melbourne's huge shadows but we are a capital city after all and we've managed to land some huge literary whales this year!

So who is expected this year? Johnathan Franzen, Simone Felici, Linda Jaivin, Phillip Pullman (via video cross though), Emily Rodda, and a litany of other international and national authors, comedians and actors.

It isn't about the names though, not really. For me the really exciting thing about this festival is the exchange of ideas by people who are in the industry of ideas. Over four massive days authors, scientists (the festival usually falls during science week so they have collaborative seminars), journalists, editors, bloggers and many other people talk about everything from "Philosophy in the Digital Age" to "Soundbites and Fury: Political Narrative in the Digital Age" to poetry slams and master-classes. There is literally several somethings for everyone and best of all most of the discussion seminars are free!

Sleepyhead

 I've just finished five days working at the Brisbane Writer's Festival on top of creating a graphic novel for my pop fiction class, and i'm truly not exaggerating when I say this is the most exhausted i've ever been in my life.

Wednesday:
6am- wake up (went to bed at 2am the previous night)
8am-3pm- Usher at Writer's fest, herding children up and down venue areas and missing out on a bite to eat all day.
3pm-4pm- train ride home, read Peter Carey's True History of the Kelly Gang
4pm-2am- illustrate, illustrate, illustrate
2am- SLEEP!

Thursday
 6am- wake up
7.30am-7.30pm - Worked up in the Writer's Green Room, terrified to approach the authors of my childhood and presenthood, but basking in the amazing awesomeness when I finally did. Made 4000 pots of coffee and 16000 sandwiches, washed 200000 cups, saucers, cutlery and food platters and walked around the main table at least 300 times.
7.30pm- take a taxi home.
8pm-5.45am -illustrate, colour, organise graphic novel

Friday
8.30am- wake up
8.30am-10.30am- add finishing touches to assignment and print out assignment sheets and rationale
10.30am- head to uni to hand in the work that has caused me so much drama
11.30am- Head to Southbank to start my Writer's fest shift
12.30pm-7.30pm- worked in the Green Room again, stared in awe once again, ran up and down flights of stairs, missed out on lunch again. Washed more dishes (never, ever again shall I hold both a sponge and a plate/cup/cutlery item in my hands again)
7.30-8.30- Dinner with my boyfriend, spontaneous decision to go see Piranha 3D
9.10pm- Pirahna starts- HILARIOUS! I highly recomend, but the 3D is disgustingly bad, the opening credits made my everything ache
11pm- Pirahna finishes, drive home. Come to the realisation that I have to be up at 6am again and that I should have been to be at 8pm to try and catch up on my sleep
11.30pm- Sleep, glorious sleep.

Saturday
6am-wake up
7.30am-8pm - Worked again in the Green Room, met Tim Ferguson, Robert Forster, Ahn Do, and a gazillion other aesome-o people.
8pm-9.30pm- Manage to catch a session, Tim Ferguson interviewed Richard Fidler, Benjamin Law, Ahn Do and Susan Maushart
9.30pm-9.45pm- struggle through the crowd of drunken 14 year olds breakdancing in the streets of South Bank,
9.45pm-10.20pm- suck down a tasty cocktail to forget the gruesome sights I met along the way to the bar
10.20pm-11.35pm- wait for the bus, bus station is packed, head to the next bus stop, even busier, call a cab, wait for ages, doesn't show, call them back, they're sending another taxi but again it doesn't show. We try the bus again, STILL packed, head to a different taxi rank, pay $2 to hail a cab, again doesn't show up. Manage to hail a cab on the street (yay) but the driver is completely psychotic (gahhh), luckily manage to arrive home without any significant damage.
12am- Fall into bed cursing Riverfire and their stupid celebrations for delaying an early bed time.

Sunday
6am- wake up (oh god no)
7.30am-6pm- worked in the green room again, so sad to be finishing up, but huzzah for sleep soon!
6pm-now- catching up on blogs, emails and facebook stuff.
next- Have to write an article for the new Brisbane online magazine Charlie, I really, really hope it doesn't keep me up all night, since I have to work tomorrow and don't get a chance to sleep in!

Phew! I love my sleep and I am so, so tired without a solid 8 hours. My sleep in on Tuesday is going to be Ah-May-Zing, it may truly become the best day of my life. On the plus side, my time at the BWF was fantastic, I met so many interesting and incredible authors, artists and creative types, not to mention the kooky volunteers that filled the staff. Loved it!