Over 14,000 attend EWF 2014

Thursday, 12 June 2014 Books+Publishing

Over 14,000 people attended the 2014 Emerging Writers’ Festival (EWF), the second festival under director Sam Twyford-Moore, breaking last year’s box office and attendance records.

General manager Kate Callingham told Books+Publishing that 14,148 people attended this year’s festival, up 17% on last year, with a 50% increase in box office revenue. ‘This incredible result is in line with our projections, but it ensures that the festival is in a very healthy position as we look towards national programming in the second half of the year—and as we start planning the 2015 programming,’ said Callingham.

One of the festival’s highlights each year is the two-day National Writers’ Conference at the Melbourne Town Hall, which was once again a sell-out event. This year’s conference featured festival ambassadors Maxine Beneba Clarke, Hannah Kent, Krissy Kneen, Benjamin Law and Felix Nobis.

Callingham said the festival’s ‘major performance events’ also sold out, which ‘contributed to memorable evenings as some of Australia’s most exciting female writers took to the stage to make tribute to strong women in their lives at Amazing Babes and as artists penned paeans to lost loves in Mixtape Memoirs’.

This year’s festival included its first Emerging Editors industry day, which was aimed at ‘aspiring and young publishing professionals’ and featured panellists Aviva Tuffield (Affirm Press), Bernadette Foley (Hachette), Erik Jensen (The Saturday Paper) and Chris Feik (Black Inc.).

Also new to the festival was a series of industry forums on ‘paying the writers’, ‘women in writing’ and ‘queer writers’. Each forum was charged with producing a manifesto for change, which was distributed during the festival’s closing party and can be viewed on the festival blog here.

During the festival, EWF announced that it will boost its national programming in the second half of 2014. In September, the festival will hold an Adelaide Roadshow, and in November EWF will travel by train through regional Victoria, regional NSW and Canberra, ending with a full-day event in Sydney.

Category: Local news