In January 2024, when the much-awaited Perth Writers Festival was being sold to the writing community in Perth, the war in Gaza was already three months old, with casualties mounting daily, most of the dead being children and women. Today, after ten months of horror, and nearly 200,000 Palestinians dead or displaced, we were right then to feel uneasy about a festival that appeared oblivious to the sorrow of its community. Several people within the writing community waited for an official statement from Writing WA, the organisation running the Festival. Instead the program proudly wore its White agenda, with only 12 First Nations and people of colour among nearly 90 invited writers. No Muslim writers had been invited although there were three Jewish writers and one Arab writer. Face to face meetings and email protests led to the addition of four ‘diverse’ writers, Muslim, Aboriginal and Arab. Despite a letter signed by 500 creatives calling for the cancellation of an anti-Palestinian celebrity who would only evoke division, Writing WA went ahead with ‘increased security’ to host a festival that had seen two prominent writers leave the program in protest and others who declined to be added as an afterthought.
The punitive measures enacted by Writing WA against dissenting voices led many to question whether the so-called ‘peak writing body’ was truly representative of the many voices that made up Perth’s vibrant writing community. The idea for a ‘collective’ that embraced the often marginalised and silenced voices within the community, began to take shape. Ten months later we are proud that the community of writers we know we are a part of, has come together to envision another way forward. We believe that anti-racist and decolonial practices require us to be visible, forthright and insistent, even when we are made deeply uncomfortable and lose job opportunities. In light of the recent Albany council meeting calling for the library to restrict or ban books described by LGBTQIA+ groups as an exercise in ‘moral panic,’ it is imperative that we speak, support and create a space that invites dissent as the sign of a healthy literary community. We have made that space. Will you join us?
