NICKY PELLEGRINO, AUTHOR & BOOKS EDITOR AT HERALD ON SUNDAY HAS A TIMELY PONDER ON LITERARY FESTIVALS.

I’m a bit perplexed by the whole idea of Writers & Readers festivals. Isn’t the whole point of books actually reading them and not listening to people talk about them? Do we need to turn authors into celebrities in order to enjoy their work more? And why on earth would you expect a person who spends their working life alone to suddenly shimmy out into the spotlight and perform.
Clearly the reading public don’t agree with me. The popularity of these festivals grows and grows. But there are other authors who think I have a point.

“The nature of writing is that it’s completely solitary,” points out English novelist Linda Grant (The Clothes on Their Backs). “You hope there is somebody out there in the world who is going to connect with what you’re writing but they’re doing it in their solitude which is reading. It’s not a performance. It’s not like being a singer, musician or an actor where there is a direct relationship between the arts and the audience.”
Aside from the torture of public speaking, authors have to contend with the potentially ego-bruising stuff – the unspoken competition over whose event sells the most tickets, who gets the longest queue at the signing table, who gets invited to the literary in-crowd’s private drinks and dinner parties
That said, the Auckland festival is generally held to be a friendly event and it certainly seems to keep getting bigger and better.
This year’s glittering prizes are Pulitzer winner Junot Diaz, Booker award winner Anne Enright and Nobel Prize winner JM Coetzee. They are joined by a hefty line-up of other international authors whose books have been published to critical acclaim.
Hopefully the bright foreign stars won’t cast our home-grown talent into the shadows. After all, an international best-seller and a slew of big awards don’t necessarily make an author interesting to listen to.

Two local authors who are guaranteed to be entertaining are Shonagh Koea (The Kindness of Strangers) and Steve Braunias (How to Watch a Bird). I’ve seen both speak and they have a sort of offbeat brilliance that makes them compelling and amusing. Columnist Joe Bennett is bound to enthral on the subject of his latest book Where Underpants Come From. Laurence Fearnley (Edwin and Matilda) has an intensity and passion that comes through when she speaks about her work. And a panel discussion about books on TV involving Hamish Keith and Colin Hogg shouldn’t be anything but stimulating.

The festival runs at the Aotea Centre from May 14 to May 18. Go to http://www.writersfestival.co.nz/ to find out more about events with these and other authors.
And if you’re too far out of town to make attending the festival an option, don’t worry…you could always just stay home and read a good book.
*Nicky Pellegrino’s most recent novel, The Gypsy Tearoom (Orion) is out this month in paperback.

This story first appeared in the Herald on Sunday, May 11, 2008.