An Embarrassment of Schnitzels: Melbourne Jewish Writers Festival 2016

Not sure how two years passed me by but I'm thrilled to say that once again I'm part of the Melbourne Jewish Writers Festival this coming week. What started as a bit of a pipe dream around the now-Director's kitchen table exploded into a veritable feast of literary goodness back in 2014. We didn't know what to expect but the massive crowds and rave reviews spoke for themselves - our mix of international and local authors, Jewish and non-Jewish, writing on topics of what I came to realise might have had a Jewish flavour but were of universal interest and relevance, seemed to strike a very loud chord.

It was always intended that the festival would be a once-every-two-years affair but we didn't take the off-year lying down. Two wonderful events - a night with David Mendelssohn in conversation with James Ley and Theatrics (a series of dramatic adaptation of great Jewish short stories) - helped satiate the appetite for literary nourishment that we'd worked up for ourselves. And, of course, we kicked off this year with the fabulous Simon Sebag Montefiore (in conjunction with our friends at the Australian Centre for Jewish Civilisation). Now comes Melbourne Jewish Writers Festival 2016, with its programme packed with even more awesomeness. There are so many session highlights that it'd be an injustice to select only a few but you can check out the entire program and buy your tickets at the MJWF website. I can, however, tell you that we have Israeli rising star Nir Baram, New York favourite Jami Attenberg, intellectual force of nature Elana Sztockman, translator-extraordinaire Ann Goldstein (she of Elena Ferrante and Primo Levi fame) as well as local stars Arnold Zable, Gail Jones, Joan London, Mireille Juchau, Peter Singer, Alan Finkel and many, many more.

I'm excited to be doing two sessions. The first is called "The H Word" and will be looking at the future of Holocaust writing in a post-survivor world. I'll be moderating a rather formidable panel that includes Nir Baram, Mireille Juchau and Kate Forsyth. Eeeep.

For the second, I will stepping outside my comfort zone in a session called "The Necessary Jewish Poet", where five writers/entertainers/luminaries (and me) have been asked to select and speak about a poet who means something to them. Other than myself, the session features Robert Richter QC, Alex Skovron, Andrea Goldsmith and Evelyn Krape. I have chosen the very obscure Czech poet and mystic Georg Mordechai Langer who, among many claims to (now forgotten) fame, was Kafka's Hebrew teacher. Why I chose him, though... well, you'll have to wait and see (or hear).

I'll also be on The Books and Arts Show on ABC Radio National with Michael Cathcart tomorrow morning (Tuesday, May 17) so that's another tick off the bucket list! If you miss it, you'll be able to catch the podcast here.

The festival kicks off this Saturday night, May 21st, with a Gala Opening Night featuring Nir Baram, Jami Attenberg, Lally Katz, Alan Gold, Gary Abrahams, Grace Halphen, Nadine Davidoff, Lior and more. Be sure to head to the website and buy your tickets ASAP to both the Gala and whatever sessions you wish to attend because they are selling faster than bad semi-erotic S&M fiction!

Confessions of a Festival Lackey

Three days on and I'm finally emerging from the wonderful afterglow of the Melbourne Jewish Writers' Festival. Over a year in the planning, the two days and one night turned out to be everything we'd hoped for and, to lean on a crappy cliche, more. Eighty writers from Melbourne, interstate and overseas, sixty volunteers and over two thousand tickets sold to sessions. Holy gefilte fish... Having been to a fair few literary festivals in my time, mostly as an avid lit lover/sycophant but more recently as a participant, I have to say this ranks up there with the best. I know, humility isn't my strong point. I could babble on about this for days but I've managed to whittle it down to a few highlights:

Favourite Sessions In Which I Did Not Participate
I went to plenty of really great sessions but three really stood out. Rachael Kohn's live video discussion with living legend Irvin Yalom was a scintillating exchange of ideas between two people of towering intellect, passion and talent. It really kicked the first day off with a bang. Peter and Renata Singer's session on the moral lessons a reader can learn from great literature was also a true delight to behold. Both Peter and Renata are amazing thinkers and I greatly appreciated the depth and substance of their perspectives on a whole range of books I already loved but hadn't quite thought of in moral/ethical terms before. Finally, Dara Horn in conversation with Tali Lavi was not only great fun but also gave the audience fantastic insight to the work (and workings) of one of American literature's young guns. Extra credit to Dara who took a punt on coming out to an inaugural festival that might just as well have tanked but, thanks in part to her, did exactly the opposite.

Session I Wished I'd Seen But Got Waylaid As A Panellist In The Other Room
By all accounts the session on Landscapes: The Sense of Place in Literature was unbelievable. No surprises there; the panel consisted of Linda Jaivin, Dara Horn and Maria Tumarkin and was chaired by Tali Lavi. I also would have loved to have seen the session on Trauma with personal fave Arnold Zable, who has worked with refugee communities and bushfire survivors, and Zeruya Shalev who survived a suicide bombing.

Personal Highlight #1
Who doesn't love crapping on about their favourite books? Heck, I've made an entire blog of it. So my session on Forgotten Gems with Arnold Zable and Renata Singer, chaired by former Jewish Museum director Helen Light was a real thrill. Arnold did Bruno Schulz's Street of Crocodiles, Renata did Clarice Lispector's Near To The Wild Heart and I (surprise surprise) did Mr. Theodore Mundstock by Ladislav Fuks. The audience really got into it too, with everyone jumping up to share their favourite 'forgotten' books. Great fun all round.

Personal Highlight #2
The Festival Hub. Whoever came up with the idea of combining the signing area, book store, coffee shop and general mingling space into one large marquee was a genius. There was a constant buzz as authors, volunteers, punters, booksellers and random strangers who happened to be passing by mingled and soaked up the incredible atmosphere.

Also, being behind the scenes, I got a lot of interesting insights into what it means to organise and participate in one of these beasts. Here, then, is a bit of advice for participants or, as I like to think of them:

Five Commandments For Writers At Festivals
1. Thou Shalt Not Be An Egotistical Douchebag. The best part of MJWF was how wonderfully collegial most of the writers were. They hung out, watched one another's sessions, were happy to talk with eager attendees; basically, did everything to give the fest a great vibe. Of course there were a couple who - despite their relative insignificance when held next to some of the other participants - thought themselves above it all. Reverse kudos to one spectacular douche who ruined his session with boring hagiographical arse-licking then had the audacity to castigate the organisers for failing to give him the respect he (and his subject) deserved. Add to that his disgusting rant against one of his fellow panellists who he (wrongly) accused of undermining him before the session. Bad form from a thoroughly average human.
2. Thou Shalt Remember It's A Festival, Not An Academic Conference. Ok, we get it. You're smart. You know a lot about the subject. But this is a fun gathering of like minded book lovers, not some stuffy university snorefest. By all means engage in a deep, intelligent, robust discussion with your fellow panellists, but don't open with a twenty minute exegesis of the minutiae of your area of interest. Wrong place, wrong time.
3. Thou Shalt Not Be An Overt Advertising Robot. You wrote a book? It's just come out? You want to promote it? No shit! That's why you were invited. And yes, a writers' festival is the perfect vehicle in which to do so. But judging by book sales at the event (and there were A LOT of them), the best kind of promotion was simply participating in an engaging way in whatever panel you happen to be on. People will want to read your book if they like you. Unless you are actually launching said book, there's no need to shove it down their throats.
4. Honour Thy Reader. Writing is a lonely, soul destroying pursuit. We don't get the chance to meet other people, let alone those who actually give half a shit about what we do. Therefore, when the opportunity arises, grab it with both hands, dance with it, hump it like an over-excited puppy, do whatever to seize the moment. Readers love chatting with you. They want to meet you. They want to know that you're a human too. They want to bounce their ideas off you, no matter how batshit crazy some of those ideas might be. This is the opposite of Commandment 1. Act accordingly.
5. Thou Shalt Turn Up. The one big disappointment of the festival was the no show of Israeli superstar (and personal favourite of mine) David Grossman. Apparently there was some miscommunication about the day - he thought it was to be Monday night when it was quite clearly scheduled for Sunday. Not throwing blame anywhere, but if you are a participant, make sure you know exactly when your session is booked and do everything humanly possible to be there. Luckily Sally Warhaft, who was supposed to conduct the interview, instead ran an impromptu session on politics and the media which was very well received by the disappointed crowd. Still, my point stands. Know your time. Be there. Of course, if you are likely to break Commandment 1 (and this most certainly doesn't apply to David Grossman who made an honest mistake and felt terrible about the whole debacle), feel free to ignore this one. You are not wanted. Douchebag.

Don't want to end on a sour note, so here are a couple of my favourite pics.

Irvin Yalom in Conversation with Rachael Kohn

The Festival Hub in Full Swing

Post-Session Selfie With Arnold Zable

Yukkin' It Up With Dara Horn

Neurotica Session with Nathan Serry, Kerri Sackville, Eli Glasman and Raphael Brous

It's Funny 'Cos It's Us with former Supreme Court Justice Howard Nathan, Dave Bloutsein and John Safran.

In-Panel Selfie seemed only fitting for a session called Voices From The Cloud: Internet Writing with Lee Kofman and Michael Gawenda

A carefully chosen excerpt from the festival banner...

Required Reading: Melbourne Jewish Writers' Festival

Less than a week to go before the inaugural Melbourne Jewish Writers' Festival is upon us. If you're from Melbourne or can get down here for the weekend, you are in for a real treat with three nights and two days of amazing sessions. Veritably plutzing with excitement, I've pushed the usual bedside pile to the far edge of the table and plonked a few festival-relevant books in its place. For those looking for a quick primer on what to read before you come (of course you don't have to have read a single thing to enjoy this event), I recommend you hit up a few of the following:

Falling Out of Time by David Grossman: An extraordinary meditation on grief and loss
The World To Come by Dara Horn: Not her latest but the one that saw her smash it out of the park. An art heist family drama par excellence!
Sea of Many Returns by Arnold Zable: Everyone champions Cafe Scheherezade but for me it is this more recent novel that crystallises Zable's beautifully humane themes. A deeply moving book about exile, displacement and the meaning of home.
My Father's Compass by Howard Goldenberg: By turns heartbreaking and hilarious, Goldenberg's memoir is a wonderful read. I guarantee you will never forget THAT bath scene.
Murder in Mississippi by John Safran: A rollicking true-crime adventure by the reigning king of awkward comedy. You just can't make this shit up.
The Poet by Alex Skovron: His session might be about translation, and he is best known for his poetry, but Skovron's novella, The Poet, is his masterpiece. A slim, Kafkaesque work of great style and even greater substance.
Nazi Dreamtime by David Bird: A fascinating study of one of the weirder footnotes of Australian history, Bird looks at the scarily large contingents of Hitler enthusiasts during the war years.
Three Dollars by Elliot Perlman: By now a local (and possibly Australian) classic, Perlman's debut marked the start of a truly shimmering career.

Hopefully that gives you a bit of a start. There are a bunch of other fantastic writers who I have not read but I'm sure you'll also love - Irvin Yalom, Zeruya Shalev, Maria Tumarkin, Linda Jaivan, Andrea Goldsmith and more. Check out the whole program on the festival website and be sure to buy your tickets soon. Sessions are starting to sell out!

It Started With a Word: The Inaugural Melbourne Jewish Writers' Festival

Well, I've been sitting on the details of this for a while now but FINALLY I can let it out: having spent the past year on the organising committee of the first ever Melbourne Jewish Writers' Festival we've finally unveiled our full program. And holy crap is it awesome (if I may say so myself). To be honest, I'm still kind of blown away by what our little team of incredibly hard working lit lovers has managed to put together. In addition to all the phenomenal Aussie writers on the bill (Elliot Perlman, Arnold Zable, John Safran, Michael Gawenda, Peter Singer, Kerri Sackville, Linda Jaivin and heaps more) we've managed to rope in Israel's Zeruya Shalev, New Yorkers Dara Horn and Matthue Roth as well as live link ups to superstars David Grossman and Irvin Yalom. Oh, and there's an opening gala of readings and original performances hosted by the inimitable Rachel Burger.

But wait there's more.

Put away your free steak knives, because I'll be making one of my increasingly rare public appearances to participate in three panels and I don't like sharp pointy things. The first, surprise surprise is about blogging. I'll be sitting alongside Australian journalism God Michael Gawenda and slam poet, novelist and zany video game programmer Matthue Roth riffing on life in the cloud. Next up is a gabfest with our two Yanks during which I expect not to get a word in edgewise. And, finally, I'll be sharing my favourite "forgotten gem" - an unrecognised Jewish classic - along with Arnold Zable and Renata Singer. If only I could choose between the veritable chest of such gems in my library. Best I can guess at the moment: it'll probably be Czech.

Early bird tickets went on sale today from the festival website. If you're in Melbourne or can head down at the end of May, get online and buy yours now.

And now a sexy picture: