Advances

New board members at ABR

At its recent Annual General Meeting, ABR welcomed two new board members, both of them long associated with the magazine.

Professor Lynette Russell is a pre-eminent anthropological historian whose distinguished contributions to her field have been recognised with an ARC Professorial Fellowship (2011–16) and a current ARC Laureate Professorship (2020–25). Among the many leadership roles she holds, Professor Russell is presently Director of Monash University’s Indigenous Studies Centre. Lynette Russell guest-edited ABR’s Indigenous issue in 2019 and will do so again in November 2023.

Geordie Williamson is a Pascall Prize-winning literary critic and publisher, and the author of The Burning Library Geordie has been The Australian’s longstanding chief literary critic, and is presently Publisher at Large at Picador. He has been a prolific ABR contributor since 2001.

In welcoming our new board members, Sarah HollandBatt (Chair of ABR), remarked:

Over the past several years we have continued to renew and refresh our Board, and I am so pleased to be welcoming two new Board members to our ranks as a part of this ongoing process. We are immensely fortunate to welcome Professor

Lynette Russell AM and Geordie Williamson to our Board, both frequent contributors to the magazine whose writing and contributions to our broader culture are well known. I know we will benefit enormously from their experience and expertise.

Literary festivals galore

Australians’ public romance with writers’ festivals shows no sign of souring. Is there a hamlet in our equivalent of Hertfordshire that doesn’t platform writers in congenial settings?

Now we have a new one on the tony Mornington Peninsula. Corrie Perkin – former journalist and bookseller – is Director of the Sorrento Writers Festival, which will run from April 27 to 30. Perkin has recruited a stellarline-up for her first festival. Speakers include Marcia Langton on the Voice, Janes Harper, Larissa Behrendt, Kerry O’Brien, and Peter Doherty. Bizarre as it seems, Peter Rose (beanie and all?) will be ‘Talking Footy’ (28 April) with Eddie McGuire, Mike Sheahan, and Caroline Wilson.

Meanwhile, ABR regular and board member Beejay Silcox has taken over the reins as Artistic Director at the Canberra Writers Festival. Beejay brings verve, polish, and flair to everything she undertakes. Her first festival will run from 16 to 20 August.

Adelaide Tour

ABR’s recent Adelaide Festival tour, conducted in association with Academy Travel, was a big hit. This soldout tour, led by Peter Rose and Christopher Menz, took in some remarkable theatre, notably the searing, confronting A Little Life, Internationaal Theater Amsterdam’s adaptation of Hanya Yanagihara’s novel of the same name, directed by Ivo van Hove, a veteran of the Adelaide Festival. For many, Ramsey Nasr’s performance as Jude (a role soon to be played by James Norton in the new English-language version, in London) was unforgettable. Equally memorable was the Belarus Free Theatre’s Dogs of Europe, based on the novel by Alhierd Bacharevič. This was inspired, timely, biting, hilarious theatre.

The tour took us to Ukaria, that oasis of chamber music in the Adelaide Hills. The occasion was the world première of Ngapa William Cooper, written and composed by Lior, Nigel Westlake, Lou Bennett, and Sarah Gory. This beautiful, anthemic new song cycle commemorates the life and activism of Yorta Yorta elder William Cooper, who in 1938 led members of the Australian Aborigines League on an eightmile walk to the German Consulate in Melbourne after Kristallnacht, perhaps the sole non-Jewish protest anywhere in the world after that horrific event in Germany. On page 59, Graham Strahle reviews the second performance, which took place at the Adelaide Town Hall.

At a private reception with the tour party, Ruth McKenzie, the new artistic director of the Adelaide Festival, impressed us with her genuine interest in people’s responses to the program (which she inherited from departing directors Rachel Healy and Neil Armfield), and dropped hints about a major opera component in her next few festivals. This gladdened the heart of operamanes in the party, including our Editor.

The impressive box-office result indicates that the Adelaide Festival has well and truly regained its mantle as Australia’s premier arts festival.

During Writers’ Week, ABR co-hosted its annual party with the Australian Society of Authors, which is celebrating its sixtieth birthday this year (ours was in 2021). Despite the unwontedly cool weather which drove us into the tent, this was a rousing success. Visiting UK Poet Laureate Simon Armitage joined us and was promptly surrounded by young local poets.

[Advances continues on page seven]