Hives and bees

The office is a hive of activity, with staff groaning, sighing and occasionally yelling out ‘wahoo’! Yes, it is get the program to The Age time.  Nothing like a healthy deadline to get the adrenalin pumping!  It’s an exciting time; it means that the festival is really and truly happening.  Of course, it also means that the first major deadline of the year has passed.

The next deadline is 17 July when the program comes out in The Age, is live on the festival website, and the box office opens.  Then we’re open for business!

So with just over 3 weeks to go, the busy little bees at festival hq are head down, down to the wire and wired for action.  It’s a frightening deadline; there is no leeway here, come the day we’re live, ready or not.  And then after that of course is the final deadline of August 21 when the festival begins.

The reality of seeing the program in print perks us all up though.  It’s a great program this year with some truly interesting and unusual guests among the more popular and well known.  I love that about writers festivals, indeed all festivals.  Sometimes you just find a little gem of a writer, a film, a play, that you stumbled upon and it was magic.  I’m already ticking off some of these and hope to be able to schedule spare time for myself to check them out.  Since I plan the staff schedule, I can surely be forgiven for making it suit myself?!

I’m looking forward to the Sounds & Music season at The Toff in Town.  Apart from the wonderful McSweeney’s launch, there are a number of other events that are really appealing.  I’ll be on duty at the Big Ideas@RMIT Capitol Theatre season, but will have to sneak out to catch them.

Helenka
Festival Manager

Monday thoughts

Melbourne in autumn makes my heart sing. I come to work past the Domain, the War Memorial barely visible through the mist and the trees in full autumnal glory. Then I get to my office which is much less romantic. Boxes of books & manuscripts make it look like we are packed up ready to go somewhere. No such luck.

Fabulous news yesterday about Christos Tsiolkas winning the Commonwealth Writers Prize 2009 for The Slap. Normally author photos are reserved, reflective and passive so I loved the photo of Christos in The Age – he was full of life, action and joy. It was a pleasure just to look at him enjoying his win. The Slap is a disturbing book in that it lays open all our prejudices and conditioning. Set in contemporary Melbourne it is a ‘must read’.  I gobbled it up over one weekend and I can highly recommend it for bookclubs – you’ll never stop arguing once you read The Slap. We are thrilled that Christos is coming to the festival after too long an absence.

Steve Grimwade and I decided that we should get new PR photos this year (mine was 6 years old) and we ended up looking like good cop/bad cop. Steve’s photos are all austere and severe whilst mine are, unsurprisingly, blowsy.  Always optimistic I’m sure that my photos are going to make me look gorgeous, 25 and model-slim. Oddly enough they don’t. Given the poor material she had to work with (and I’m talking about myself here, not Steve) Ponch Hawkes has done wonders.

Rosemary
Festival Director