Adelaide Festival. Pioneer Women's Memorial Garden. 1 to 6 Mar 2025
Louise Adler. We bless her. We curse her.
She laid on the most breathtakingly relevant Writers' Week (WW) arguably in the event’s long history.
Oh yes. There were plenty of fine and interesting authors in the tradition of WW but in this troubling time, somehow ahead of the curve, she programmed some really hot potatoes embroidering the week with attention to the deeper politics of the world around us.
’Twas an added ingredient of turbulence, creating new crowds which snaked in chatty queues out of the Drill Hall, where 700 or more people devoured the knowledge and opinions of leading intellectuals. She did it again at the Town Hall. These were ticketed events in this the world’s one and only free writers' festival. They don’t break the bank and people are seated in air-conditioned comfort, a luxury noted by anyone who, like me, has sweated in the sun because there were no shaded chairs available in the Garden.
Chagrin has it that one cannot possibly be at every event. There are too many that are too good.
And patience must accompany one to those very crowded days when lines for food and coffee are exhausting. I admit on one occasion it was quicker to duck up the hill to the Myer food court.
The Drill Hall sessions were deeply satisfying. Sarah Ferguson live interviewed David Remnick streaming on the big screen for the America, America session. Remnick, for a quarter of a century editor of The New Yorker, had a breathtaking degree of international erudition and a grim view of the Trump presidency. His experience in Russia led him to believe that Putin would be well pleased with the status quo.
Sessions analysing the state of play in the USA also took place on the open-air stages with journalists and writers; all events packed beyond capacity. WW people, not just Adelaideans for there were a lot of interstate visitors in the crowds, have a rapacious and anxious hunger for news and understanding of this very fraught time in our history.
Former NSW Premier Bob Carr was a vocal and very knowledgeable player in this territory on a number of stages. One of them was on the panel of Where’s the Centre Left in the Age of Trumpmuskovie? SA Premier Peter Malinauskas shone on this panel along with Kim Carr, John Crace, and Tom Baldwin. Bottom line was the fragile condition of democracy in 2025. And also, perhaps, the lack of understanding of civics by too many people.
The Future of the Mainstream Media was deemed pretty bloody grim from the views of former Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger and former ABC director Mark Scott. And just to stick a fork in it and decree mainstream-print media fated for the boneyard was Eric Beecher, Crikey owner and former ABC and News Corp editor.
Then there were the Town Hall events. Most disappointing of all WW events attended by this correspondent was Islamaphobia: What’s the Problem?, a session with Waleed Aly and his wife Susan Carland. While it was articulately prefaced by Aftab Malik, Special Envoy to Combat Islamaphobia in Australia, we had no enlightenment from the couple. Instead, it was an earnest and fairly circuitous questioning of the word “Islamaphobia” itself. Is it a thing or not? But no why or wherefores. Everyone left feeling a bit numb.
The Antisemitism session was quite the opposite. It was introduced by Peter Malinauskas giving a superlative speech (which can be read in full here) and then with Sir Simon Scharma delivering an oration of immense historical depth providing context to the worryingly growing phenomenon of antisemitism.
Overall, it was a dark and serious WW riding right on the zeitgeist of global political thought, topped up with themes of sexism, racism, corporate greed, grief, and justice.
However, it did have its lighter moments: a bit of juicy crime; a smatter of romance; a touch or two of Australiana with the likes of novelist Stephen Orr; Shaun Micallef with an anthology; Julia Zemiro with a quiz; a wee tad of poetry; and, for delicious voyage into the wonders of being an existential “me”, the wonderful Robert Dessaix.
The food and wine onsite was excellent as ever, the coffee good, the bookshop fab and, did I mention the gin bar? Aaaah.
At the end of the day, after some of those gruelling political sessions, a blood orange Prohibition gin and tonic went down a treat.
Samela Harris
When: 1 to 6 Mar
Where: Pioneer Women's Memorial Garden
Bookings: Closed
