National Young Writers' Festival
27 Oct. 1999
9 review articles
Edited by Kirsty Leishman
![[image]](http://renewal.va.com.au/writersfestival/artwork/splashy.gif)
The second National Young Writers' Festival incorporated
Electrofringe '99 and the National Student
Media Conference, in a gathering which defined itself in opposition to
existing Australian writers' festivals. While writers' events in
Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne could be described as Literary festivals,
the event in Newcastle decried books as a commodity form, and set out to
privilege "ideas as they are written down and as they are
applied" -– not only in books and newspapers, but especially
"in magazines, in zines, in comics, on radio, in the student press,
on the Internet, on film; and anywhere else you may choose to apply
them" (festival programme). It was, declared one of the festival
managers, Marcus Westbury, in the festival programme, "a festival
about infecting, dissecting, and (sometimes) rejecting the public
culture. It is about ideas that are breeding, and not ideas that are on
a life support system".
The importance of having a festival of this kind is articulated by Sunanda Creagh in her contribution to this M/C Reviews feature. In the Nietzschean spirit of the festival, Creagh's words are a call to action for her readers to continue to participate in youth cultures, but also to recognise the importance of engaging with the official, public culture.
In the following review articles, the sheer diversity of the youth cultures present at the festival is all too apparent. Paul Elliott (aka Gonzo Macmillan) lauds the choice of sessions available at any one time during the festival. His experience was different to that of Adam Ford who often took time out from the festival to explore other aspects of Newcastle, including the excellent range of vegetarian food and pulp fiction that the city had to offer. Back at the festival, Felicity Meakins questioned the use of "young" to describe some participants, whose receding hair lines called their status as "youth" into disrepute. Perhaps the unexpected range of ages at this young writers' festival might be explained by the reviews submitted by Alex Burns and Axel Bruns (no, that's not a typo, they are two different people!). Burns's and Bruns's focus on the Electrofringe '99 stream of the festival show that the question of age is sometimes unimportant -– you can be as young as you want to be in cyberspace, right? Thankfully, you can also wear whatever you want, as Simon Mee wishes to stress in his poetic response to the "Retromortis" panel which featured Richard Fidler.
The timing of the National Young Writers' Festival coincided with the official closure of BHP in Newcastle. As a significant chapter of the city's history came to an end, it is clear that there are many who have already begun writing drafts for a new chapter, one that will be a "challenge to action", and one that will almost certainly be published on the Internet...
Bookmark this article:
