Dr Abdel-Fatteh has been removed

from the Writers' Week program and there are protests about her removal. Many other "authors" have now withdrawn from the event in protest.  

For those of you in Upover and Elsewhere I may need to explain that Dr Abdel-Fattah is an academic who has called for the "end of Israel" and said that "if you are Zionist you have no claim or right to cultural safety" and anyone who supports Israel "should be shamed into discomfort and silence".  Yes, she is controversial and that is almost certainly why she was invited in the first place.

I am not going to into the rights or wrongs of her removal. Instead note how I put those quotation marks around the word "authors". For me our "Writers' Week" is no longer a week about writers or writing. It is not there for writers or anyone interested in the craft of writing. Instead it has become an event which has allowed the organisers to indulge in the business of controversy and activism. It has gone from being about books to about politics and issues. 

I can hear you asking, "Does that matter? Isn't it important to hear from people who write about those things?" Well, hold it right/write there. Have these people actual written those books? How many of the most controversial or the most "important" people have actually written the books they are there to talk about? The answer is that too many of them have not. They have been written by others, "ghost" writers. Where they have been written by themselves there has often been a great deal of input by others. 

It seems that Writers' Week is no longer about writing. My first experience of Writers' Week was in my teens. I was in my what would now be called a "gap year" I suppose. I was still at school but I was marking time, waiting to be old enough to go to teacher training college. On that famous occasion Judith Wright appeared unannounced at school, demanded to see the headmistress and informed her rather than asked her that I would not be at school for the following week. I would be attending Writers' Week with her, one of the best known poets in the country.  She claimed she needed me because her increasing deafness made it hard for her to follow discussions which followed the sessions. It was as exhilarating as terrifying for a young would-be writer. 

Looking back on those weeks now (I went to more in the following years) I realise how much I was able to learn simply by being there and listening. Yes, I met a great many writers. Many of them were household names but of course I discovered they were also "just people". They had their doubts, their concerns, their fears about whether they were providing readers with that "something" which all writers search for. 

Most sessions were open to members of the public but they were still primarily for writers. There were sessions on "plot" and "character" and "sources". Yes, of course politics were mentioned but they were not the focus. There were occasional fiery exchanges. 

There were a tiny number of authors who thought they were superior to everyone else. (Judith introduced me to the Nobel Laureate Patrick White as "This is Cat, and be polite to her, she writes too." He was not a pleasant man.) Most writers respected each other and supported the young ones coming up. They went out into schools and talked to students and gave interviews for television. (Outside broadcasting was expensive back then so it often meant going to the studios.)

Now it has become a commercial event. There is a tent which is turned into a temporary bookshop on the grounds where the sessions are held out of doors. Those invited to participate and speak are largely controversial figures, the more controversial the better it seems. I have ceased to go. The local library "live-streams" some of it but the numbers who watch there are decreasing. There is something missing now. I think it may be the writers.