An antidote to glitzy city events, literary festivals are springing up in regional centres and towns across Australia, mixing big names and local talent

On the eve of one of the world’s biggest literary awards a few years ago, a famous Australian finalist bemoaned the increasingly public side of his writing life.

Of the endless press calls leading up to the prize announcement and the long list of festivals his agent and publishers expected him to attend, he privately lamented: “It’s a meat market out there – I mean you write something that touches a nerve, which you hope it will, and suddenly you’re public property. I just want to write.”

These festivals are not for the writer whose favoured reader interaction is fleeting

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