Writers festival reflections

Any day I get paid be a writer is a good day. So I was delighted to book four writers festival events for the 2025 season – which I am now half-way through.

After the great disappointment of Bendigo Writers Fest in August, I was grateful to climb back on the Emerging Writers Festival stage with Cher Tan, Luke Horton and facilitator Aviva Tuffield in September.

But it is a grim time to talk about how to make arts careers work, when it’s never been harder to do so, nor a more dangerous a time to be a writer in the world: censorship, silencing, media bias and fake news, our work being stolen to feed the AI bots taking our jobs, writers festival walkouts and journals closing down, decimated literary funding and infrastructure, and declining reading, literacy and critical thought (at the time we need them most). These are not just issues of freedom of speech. As Palestinian journalist Youmna El Sayed writes: ‘It is an assault on the world’s right to know. And the day we allow that assault to succeed is the day press freedom dies everywhere.’

As I write in the hopeful-yet-cynical lull of a ceasefire in Gaza, it is impossible not to reflect on the colleagues we’ve lost in Palestine, the 270+ journalists and media workers that Israel has killed in the last two years alone (making 2024 the deadliest year on record for journalists – with more writers killed than World Wars 1 and 2, and the wars in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan and Ukraine combined).

In 2018, when Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi was killed by agents of his own government, Western journalists and news outlets were outraged – and rightfully so, given targeting even one journalist is a war crime. But those same outlets have barely published a word about our Palestinian colleagues. As Palestinian poet Mosab Abu Toha observed last month, ‘it took just five days of public pressure to bring Jimmy Kimmel back to his show after a suspension. Five days, and he was back on air. But for 716 days, no amount of pressure has stopped the slaughter of Palestinian journalists, some of them killed on air.’

We live in overwhelming, polycrisis times, any part of which could be dismissed as too complex, too big for us to possibly make a difference – but in which we have been made complicit all the same. But surely, as readers and writers at writers’ festivals, we can at least agree that: writers have a right to life and livelihood; that our stories are important, necessary and hold up a mirror to reflect our experience of the world; and that if we want our own stories to be able to be safely told, we have an obligation to fight for those rights for others too.

I was so grateful for the thoughtfulness and hopefulness of a room full of emerging writers at EWF who know their words can change the world, and look forward to more big discussions at Odyssey Lit Fest and A Day in Carlton soon.

In these first fragile days of ceasefire, the bombs may have stopped, and some of the hostages may have been freed (including some Israel imprisoned for 20+ years with neither crime or charge), but the food and water waiting outside Gaza’s gates is yet to flow freely into the city, Palestinians are still starving, and their journalists are still being killed. And yet, at Sunday’s rally marking two years of genocide, the Palestinian community once again demonstrated their impossible resilience, hospitality, graciousness and generosity, alongside First Nations elders and leaders from what we call Australia, and allies of all faiths and no faith from all over the world. A moment of pause to hope and draw breath, but a heaviness too. Grief beyond words for the last two years of genocide and the decades of occupation and displacement before that. Horror and anger at what we’ve all seen, or scrolled away from, or been forced to be complicit in. Fear for what is not yet known and what is still to come. And the reminder that ‘a ceasefire does not mean freedom. A ceasefire does not mean liberation. A ceasefire means a temporary respite for the Palestinian people.’ A ceasefire means we keep going, keep shouting, keep showing up, and keep using the tools of our craft to find words to keep calling for freedom and safety and justice for all.

Further reading: Palestine as a governance issue

You can check out all of the articles and resources in this series, which include:

Subscribe or support

For future updates, subscribe to my free occasional enews.

If any of my work or writing has been of value to you, I’d appreciate you joining me as an advocate, ally or accomplice from just $2.50/month on Patreon).

Unknown's avatar

Author: katelarsenkeys

Writer. Rabble-rouser. Arts, Cultural and Non-Profit Consultant.

One thought on “Writers festival reflections”

  1. Pingback: Board members, we need to talk about Palestine – LARSEN | KEYS

Leave a comment