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A CELEBRATION OF BOOKS & WRITING
2007 FESTIVAL WRAP-UP
The first Franschhoek Literary Festival in early May drew an estimated 2 000 readers.
Readers, writers, media and book clubs strolled through the village interacting with 30
authors, poets and publishers in lively informal discussions, signings, fundraisers,
talks, breakfasts, dinners and over drinks.
The dates for next year are 16 – 18 May 2008 and the very generous sponsorship
of the Delta Trust has been renewed. With Christopher Hope again as Festival Director,
we aim to attract a mix of recently published South African writers and a handful
of African and international writers.
The drive for a new community library will
continue to be the main focus, and the FLF committee is pleased to announce that
our first festival raised a grand total of R104 007 towards the library fund.
Wordsworth Books, whose bookshop in the Town Hall buzzed all weekend with sales and
signings, generously donated 10% of their takings to the fund. Other exciting news
is that the Exclusive Books Reading Trust has donated a fully fitted and stocked
container children’s library to the valley, which is giant step towards our goal
of making books in local languages available to everyone.
The much-appreciated writer outreach to local schools and the Groot Drakenstein
correctional facility will continue next year. New York writer Siri Hustvedt
was so inspired by her prison visit that she donated a pile of books to the
offenders’ library, and is helping to fund the writing workshops being run
there by another of our FLF 2007 writers, crime queen Margie Orford.
To further involve the community and young readers, the FLF 2008 committee will
plan children’s events, offer low-priced tickets to students, and donate
complimentary seats. The Poetry Competition, which attracted over 200
entries this year and resulted in a booklet of winning entries, will be another highlight.
Enjoyable fringe events like the classical music concerts, Off-the-Wall poetry,
Mike van Graan’s one-person satire and the writers at chefs’ tables will be woven into the programme again.
All of us involved in producing this first festival will treasure the memory of writers talking so openly about their work and lives, and readers crowding doorways to listen. Franschhoek has started something special in the South African book world. Long may the Festival continue!
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In an age when so
much of our culture is pre-packaged,
chewed into ready-to-digest electronic sound bites, literary festivals
offer a
point of human contact, an opportunity to listen, ask and debate that
is reminiscent of an earlier age, but a vast improvement
on it.
Ben Macintyre, in The Times
A book can change your life. You can read yourself out
of poverty.
Annari van der Merwe,
Publisher
The book has
great advantages over the computer: it
is
light and it’s
cheap. That it has changed little in over 400 years suggests an
uncommonly apt design. You can drop a book in the bathtub, dry it out
on the radiator and still read it. You can put it in the attic,
pull it out 200 years later, and probably decipher the words. However
much dictionaries and encyclopaedias might be superseded, a
well-thumbed paperback blowing in a beach breeze represents a
technological stronghold the computer may never invade.
D T Max
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