At the moment, with so many places locked down around the world, it seems a great privilege to be able to attend a writers festival in person. I always look forward to the Margaret River Readers & Writers Festival, in our beautiful South West wine region, but this year more than ever.
The festival will run from Friday 14 to Sunday 16 May, in venues in and around Margaret River but primarily at Margaret River HEART, the region’s new entertainment hub in the centre of town.
Congratulations to new festival director Sian Baker, who has put together an ambitious program of events. Among the many authors taking part are Julia Baird, Kate Mildenhall, Pip Williams, Karen Wyld, Chris Flynn, Bob Brown, Craig Silvey, Donna Mazza, Elizabeth Tan, Brigid Lowry, David Whish-Wilson, Natasha Lester and Emily Sun. The full program is here.
If you’re keen to ‘attend’ from afar, there’s also a Three-Day Virtual Pass available.
looking up/looking down 
I wish you could have seen how my eyes lit up when I saw the word ‘virtual’! And what’s more, the option is there to watch it live or watch it later (which is a good idea given our differing time zones). I am rapt!
You know, I’ve just finished reading Carly Findlay’s Growing Up Disabled in Australia, and in one of the essays I saw that having so many virtual cultural events was just wonderful for disabled people who can’t normally get to festivals, and the writer hoped this innovation would persist. It has been disappointing to see how quickly some festivals have ditched it now that lockdowns seem to be over… when I enquired about it at the Auckland festival, I got a rather pert reply more or less to the effect that they had so cleverly got C_19 under control that they didn’t need to do digital any more.
So three cheers for the Margaret River Festival!
Three cheers indeed! So glad to hear this, Lisa, and I agree with you: the ability to connect remotely to festivals, talks, book launches and other events has been a positive outcome from a year of not many. For us here in the West, it’s been especially beneficial, and I had hoped—assumed, really—that virtual attendance would become part of the presentation of most festivals. Let’s hope there will be many who see the positives and get on board.
Enjoy the festival!