Overview

This post is basically going to serve as a 'these were my favourite speakers and this is what they discussed' minimal analysis account of the weekend. 

Peter Singer was the only guest whose writing I had actually read before the festival (I'd actually studied him in high school and then again at university). His talk on the Friday night was good, although it was basically just a rehash of things I already knew from his work on effective altruism. I hadn’t heard of most of the people I saw over the weekend, let alone read their works, which was interesting as it was all new content for me. Peter was part of a second session, first thing Saturday, with his wife, Renata Singer, who is also a writer. Rather than talk about philosophy, Renata spoke about the value of books (which I suppose is philosophical). It was probably the most interesting talk of the weekend for me, and she only spoke for about fifteen minutes before giving it to Peter, who also talked only briefly before opening it up to the audience for questions. (Power couple, by the way.) 

Renata’s talk was really fantastic. She spoke about the influence young adult literature can have on a person throughout their entire life, particularly in regards to morals. She says literature shows us how ‘people should, do, treat each other’. It shows us that there are worlds beyond our own. It allows us to experience thrills without real consequence. Good fiction shows the ‘complexity of morality’, which I absolutely agree with. 

Jaclyn Moriarty was perhaps my favourite individual guest of the weekend. She spoke about writing itself, how words can become worlds, where her characters come from, how plot, setting, characters’ motivations and goals and personalities combine to make stories. This is the kind of thing I was interested in when I signed up for the course. My last two sessions, The Character of Place and Tools of the Trade, were the best in this regard, especially after attending a slew of talks on politics. I ate them up. Anecdotes on how fiction writers conceive and create their novels are what I really wanted to hear about. Jaclyn and Gabrielle Tozer were the two writers who lived up to my hopes for the weekend. 

And finally, David Astle’s session was a (literally) last minute decision of mine, in a timeslot with four sessions I was interested in. It ended up being my favourite talk of the weekend. David’s best known for creating crosswords, and his obsession with words and the English language was fascinating to behold. Some writers are characters themselves, and David's certainly one of them. His host, Anthony Radford, described himself as a layman in comparison to David’s knowledge, so he would prompt him with a question and let David run loose, which was a clever way to run the discussion. Their chemistry was great, and David was really entertaining and didn’t take it too seriously, which was refreshing after the politics talks. The audience joined in on the fun too, and the whole session was just relaxed and enjoyable. I think going to any of the other talks would have destroyed me on the Sunday morning. Seriously, check out my itinerary, the Saturday was just filled with gloom as it went on. My Sunday sessions were each just a lot of fun, something to keep in mind for when I go next year.