From The Australian:
IN literary Australia, there’s reading, writing … and festival going. As author Frank Moorhouse reveals in Review today, the last has become a seriously big-budget item, with 46 writers festivals held each year in Australia.Last year, about 285,000 event seats were filled at these festivals, an attendance rate that is increasing annually by up to 20 per cent. Admittedly this bums-on-seats measure includes people going to more than one session at a festival but, even so, it’s thought 90,000 individuals went to writers festivals in 2005.
This increasing popularity has led some to criticize the events as gathering places for anti-establishment liberals. In response, “one programmer jokes, ‘the Right is usually too busy making money and ruling the world to attend. The Left is much more inclined to want to change things.'”
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