#9. Making Waves: 10 years of the Byron Bay Writers Festival - edited by Marele Day, Susan Bradley Smith and Fay Knight

I picked up this book because I like writers' festivals - well, actually, that's not true... I like the IDEA of writers' festivals, but when I actually get there I get frustrated by the crowds of middle-aged women who are just certain there is a novel within them, just waiting to get out. Anyway so this book was a kind of compromise - get the writers' festival vibe without actually being there. And sadly my experience of the book was much like my experience at writers' festivals - slightly bewildering and disappointing. The editors of this book seem to have compiled the anthology with some very loose rules - it appears all the authors must have been a guest at the Byron Bay Writers' Festival at some point, but there the connection ends. Some of the pieces were keynotes or presentations made at the festival, some were pieces about the experience of the festival, and some were pieces snatched from other sources, with the only relationship to the Writers' Festival that they turned up once. The ordering of the chapters was odd too – a longish essay by Christopher Kremmer on 'American Empire: Politics and Culture in the 21st Century' butts up against a piece of fiction by Roger McDonald. It's a bit jarring, and I would have preferred some sort of thematic organisation.
There were some gems, though, that made me glad to have picked this up. Among them, Kate Grenville's Thea Astley lecture from 2005, called 'Saying the Unsayable', which showed off both her incredible eye for historical research and her ability to bring a scene from the distant past into full colour - which, from what I have read, makes The Lieutenant such fascinating reading. Hilary McPhee, who I have always enjoyed reading, gave a speech at the opening dinner of the festival in 2002 on the state of writing and publishing in Australia, which was of course of interest. There were some, by turns, touching and funny anecdotal pieces by Ruth Ostrow and Nick Earls, a chapter by Larry Buttrose on capital-t literary Theory which brought back fond memories of my tussle with Postmodernism at uni, and a wonderful round-up of writings by Aboriginal authors on their sense of place and their connection to coutnry by Anita Heiss.
But perhaps reflecting my initial attraction to this book, my favourite pieces were about the experience of being a writer at the festival - Mungo MacCallum's nightmare experience at the Melbourne Writers' Festival, and his joy at the contrast with the Byron version; Robyn Williams recounting how he had to be dragged out of bed by the organisers as his forgotten session was already underway; and Di Morrissey, a Byron native, about doing the rounds as a popular author and the scandals that inevitably surround such an event.
Looking back, there were actually many more 'highlights' in this book than I remembered - but I'll attribute my lukewarm response to a lack of editorial flow.