In 2024, the long-running Perth writers' festival announced it would be taking a break in 2025, coming back with a refreshed event in early 2026.
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it → run → 2026
That never happened.
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That → happen → ?
It's now unclear when it will come back, leaving Perth as the only state capital in Australia without a major writers' festival.
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it → come → festival
Literature has been a part of the Perth Festival since it was founded by the University of Western Australia in 1953, and in the 1990s the writers' component became a standalone event within the festival program, with its own manager.
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component → found → manager
By 2018, it had expanded to become Perth Writers Week, before the COVID pandemic pared it back to a single weekend that by 2024 was run jointly by peak body Writing WA and the State Library of WA.
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that → expand → WA
In September that same year, Perth Festival announced a new writers' festival would begin in 2026 to "highlight literary brilliance from nations around the Indian Ocean rim, while showcasing WA's extraordinary talent to the world".
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festival → announce → world
A festival spokesman said the "intent remains, with a focus on creating the right conditions for it to emerge sustainably, ensuring any new major initiative is delivered at the right time and scale," but plans have yet to be confirmed.
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plans → say → time
So what happened?
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what → happen → ?
The last Perth Festival Writers Weekend, held in February 2024, was, by some accounts, a tense event.
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Weekend → hold → accounts
Organisers had invited singer/songwriter Deborah Conway to appear at the festival in three events, including an opening night performance, songwriting workshop and a panel discussion about her new book.
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Organisers → invite → book
Five months earlier, the October 7 Hamas attacks on Israel, and Israel's military response, which saw thousands of civilian deaths in Gaza, had sparked waves of protest.
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which → see → protest
In an interview on Radio National Breakfast on December 15, 2023 about division in the arts community over the Israel-Gaza war, host Patricia Karvelas asked Conway about the impact of Israel's military action on innocent people, including children.
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Karvelas → ask → children
Conway responded: "Well, depends on what you call kids."
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you → respond → what
Her comments triggered a strong response, and in the weeks before the festival, the organisers found themselves confronting an unexpected situation.
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themselves → trigger → situation
An open letter calling on the organisers to rescind Conway's invitation began circulating, ultimately receiving around 500 signatures.
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letter → call → signatures
The festival did not accede to demands to cancel Conway's appearance.
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festival → accede → appearance
Instead, it bolstered security, set up designated protest zones outside the library, added three writers of Palestinian heritage to the program and released a statement, saying it sought to foster a safe and inclusive environment.
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it → bolster → environment
"We are committed to ensuring our artists and audiences have a safe space to share their voices.
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artists → commit → voices
We oppose censorship and reject bigotry, harassment and discrimination of any kind.
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We → oppose → kind
We condemn violence and the inciting of hate or violence.
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We → condemn → hate
We utterly reject Islamophobia and anti-Semitism," the statement said.
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statement → reject → Islamophobia
Literature programming becomes 'daunting'
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programming → become → ?
In the years since, division in the community over Israel's invasion of Gaza has engulfed the literary sector, causing the collapse of Adelaide Writers' Week and Bendigo Writers Festival, and a mass exodus of authors from Queensland University Press over the cancellation of a children's book contract, after the illustrator was accused of anti-Semitism.
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illustrator → engulf → Semitism
Per Henningsgaard, the current chair of Writing WA, suspects it's a daunting prospect for anyone looking to restart Perth's writers festival.
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it → suspect → festival
"We've seen literary programming on a national level that has been the source of significant controversy," Dr Henningsgaard said.
"
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Henningsgaard → see → controversy
I think as an entity that is responsible for arts programming, you might look at some of those examples and be a bit scared, a bit hesitant about how to proceed.
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you → think → examples
"I don't know if that is playing a role in Perth Festival's thinking around this; I have no special insight into that, but it does strike me as significant that the Perth Festival continues to program theatre, dance, visual art and yet isn't programming in the writing space at the moment."
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Festival → know → moment
Sisonke Msimang, who curated the festival (then known as the Literature and Ideas program) from 2019 to 2022, said the event had been navigating sensitive issues for some time, such as the Perth Festival's long running partnerships with the mining sector, including oil and gas giant Chevron, which sponsored the festival's music program.
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which → curate → program
"Writers tend to be super political.
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Writers → tend → ?
They tend to ask a lot of questions,"she said.
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They → tend → questions,"she
Msimang said that where festival directors may have been able to tiptoe around politics in the past, the current situation in Gaza made that impossible.
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that → say → Gaza
I think festival directors have generally been pretty tame, and they haven't been put in the spotlight because there was nothing urgent that demanded it in the same way that Gaza has," she said.
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she → think → way
Alternative literature programming grows
In the absence of the Perth Writers Festival, a number of smaller events, many of them run largely by volunteers and supported by local councils and libraries, have flourished.
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many → grow → councils
These events include the Festival of Fiction in Joondalup, Totally Lit in Fremantle, the Mandurah Writers Festival and Kalamunda Writers Festival, each run over a weekend, as well the Big Day of Books run by the ABC in its studios in Perth and a one-day event at the State Library featuring authors shortlisted for the Premier's Book Awards.
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events → include → Awards
The stand-out in community festivals has been the Margaret River Writers and Readers festival (MRRF), run over three days in May, which has had considerable success in recent years attracting international and interstate authors to the wine-growing town three hours' drive south of Perth.
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which → run → Perth
The festival began in 2009 and has grown significantly since 2017, when Tourism WA committed to ongoing funding for Arts Margaret River, the community organisation that runs the event.
"That really took away a lot of the stress of chasing little pockets of money everywhere to try and do something," Michelle Wright, Arts Margaret River's general manager, said.
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Wright → begin → something
The festival also strategically schedules its program close to, but not on the same weekends, as the Sydney and Melbourne writers' festivals, which enables them to split the costs of flying international authors to Australia and offer those authors multiple events around the country to appear at.
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which → schedule → country
So successful is the MRRF that it has started exporting one-off literary events back to Perth through a partnership with the state library.
"We've made all this major, huge effort to get someone to Western Australia, because we're not exactly close, so we really try and make it as good as we can and just share the love as much as we can, touching as many people with books," Wright said
She said the festival organisers were keenly aware of the importance of free speech and had taken steps to ensure festival programming decisions were independent and could not be subject to pressure from any of the sponsors.
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decisions → start → sponsors
"We are absolutely independent of any organisation that we work with.
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we → work → that
We've done this deliberately,"she said.
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We → do → this
…and 13 more, not listed.
The Aporia