Farewell, MWF 2011

As we decamp from Beer Deluxe, accept that no, we can’t live in the magnificent BMW Edge, and unplug our laptops from ACMI powerpoints, I have to admit it’s nice to have some breathing space and an opportunity to reflect on another brilliant MWF.

Of course, there were some low points. For example, when the MWF team thought up the theme ‘Stories Unbound’, I’m pretty sure they didn’t mean that I should accost festival guests with questionable snippets of my life experience every time I had a wine (or eight). Plus, the usual festival dashing about meant that I didn’t catch all the sessions I wanted to; despite daily trying to one-up festival director Steve Grimwade in terms of how many I managed to see, I had to lie to beat him.

But I am always energised when I reflect upon MWF events, and my memories from the past eleven days provide no exception. Here are my 2011 festival highlights, in no particular order:

1. Peggy Frew’s reading at the launch of The Big Issue fiction edition. Like a lot of festival punters, I’m often in two minds about readings, but when Frew finished reading from her Big Issue story, ‘Camping’, you could hear the audience collectively, finally exhale.

2. Speaking with debut and early-career novelists Melanie Joosten, Jessica Au, SJ Finn and Raphael Brous about love, growing up, work and ghosts in Melbourne’s New Wave

3. The passionate and incendiary Mona Eltahawy on the uprising in Egypt and how it was inspired by and will influence the politics of the Middle East

4. Engaging in a bit of Julia Zemiro-love at Friday Night Live

5. The modest but utterly original César Aira discussing his slim novels and his unusual no-editing, ‘flight forward’ technique

While all these experiences are defined by having been part of MWF 2011, they are also springboards that will propel me into directed and engaged reading for the rest of the year and beyond.

As always, my thanks to the MWF team for an inspiring, varied, well-run and exciting festival. And this year, a guernsey too to Melbourne weather, which was mostly salutary, mostly kind.

What were your highlights from MWF 2011?

Get political

Feel like a bit of grit in your Saturday?

Power Without Responsibility

Over the last 10 years, The Australian has become one of the most prominent conservative political campaigners in this country – so comfortable in this assumed role that in an editorial in September 2010, the paper announced that it believed the Greens ‘should be destroyed at the ballot box’. But what does it mean for a newspaper, which claims to uphold the ideals of fair and balanced reporting, to be such an overt political actor? And what effect does this have on the political debate in Australia? 

If you’re quick this morning you could get along to BMW Edge at 10am to see Robert Manne and Eric Beecher talk about Manne’s new Quarterly Essay: Bad News – Murdoch’s Australian and the Shaping of the Nation, examining The Australian’s political voice and it’s role in public debate. For those of you still coming down from the New News conference and Jay Rosen’s excellent keynote last week, this could be the perfect antidote.

Middle East – Spring or Fall?

The popular uprising in Egypt that began on January 25 toppled the regime of Hosni Mubarak. Soon Egypt will be holding its first elections post-uprisings. But how did the uprising come about? What did it mean for the people? What are the complications involved and how might it be seen in the context of the revolutions occurring all across the Middle East? Professor Amin Saikal, commentator Mona Eltahawy and narrative non-fiction writer Joseph Braude will be discussing with Louise Adler the history and the possibilities for the region, today at 2:30pm in BMW Edge.

Big Ideas: 10 Years After 9/11 – Pakistan, Afghanistan and the Struggle for Democracy

“They are wasting your taxpayers’ money and the blood of your soldiers.”

If you haven’t yet heard former Afghan parliamentarian Malalai Joya speak – if you missed her Monday night appearance on Q&A, or her appearance on the Conversation Hour with John Faine on Friday morning – here’s your chance. Joya’s uncompromising politics are underpinned by years of underground activism for women’s rights, a public fight against internal corruption in Afghanistan, foreign occupation and war. Defying death threats and surviving assassination attempts, Joya continues to speak out despite attempts to silence her, making her one of the strongest and clearest voices against the war. She is speaking tonight at BMW Edge at 6:30pm as part of the MWF’s Big Ideas program.

On uprising

Since December 2010, the Arab world has been in uprising. Beginning in Tunisia, one man’s act of self-immolation became the catalyst for a wave of political protests that spread throughout the Middle East and North Africa over the following months.

On January 25, 2011, the population of Egypt took to the streets, protesting police brutality and abuse of power, demanding the resignation of the Ministry of Interior and accountability from President Hosni Mubarak’s government. After 18 days of protests throughout the country, during which the Mubarak regime declared curfews, deployed the military and shut down internet access in attempts to cripple the escalating unrest, Mubarak himself finally resigned.

During the 18-day uprising, a journalist by the name of Mona Eltahawy started appearing on radio and television broadcasts across the United States, giving her perspective on the events unfolding in Cairo. A New York-based commentator, Eltahawy was born and raised in Egypt and moved to the United States in 2000. Her writing has appeared in the Washington Post, International Herald Tribune, Toronto Star, Israel’s The Jerusalem Report and Denmark’s Politiken among others, and she is a frequent guest on television and radio. Eltahawy speaks and writes frequently on Islam and feminism, and has attracted criticism for some of her politics, particularly her support for the Libyan intervention and the recent burqa ban in France. Her high profile during the Egyptian uprising led to feminist website Jezebel dubbing her ‘the woman explaining Egypt to the West’. Determined and uncompromising, Eltahawy is a compelling figure in the line-up of female political voices staking out their territory at the 2011 Melbourne Writers Festival.

Mona Eltahawy will be speaking at the MWF as part of the Big Ideas programme. She will be speaking on The Roots of the Egyptian Revolution: From Tahrir Square to Liberation from Dictatorship on September 2, and discussing the Arab Spring with Joseph Braude, Amin Saikal and Louise Adler on September 3.