Blue is free

Irfan Yusuf

Writers are a notoriously unmoneyed lot. (Not you, JK.) So it will be sweet news to the ears of my impoverished friends that The Morning Read, the first MWF event today — nay, every day — is free. In fact, there’s a free event in the Festival Club in every time block of the festival’s scheduling throughout the main program. In the printed program, all the events headed in blue script are free. So, you could easily attend MWF for the entire seven-day main program and not pay a dime. (Uh, hello, there’s even a free wine tasting.) But back to The Morning Read, chaired by Chris Flynn of Torpedo, which features three authors reading from their work, new, published or unpublished.

Forgive the ‘dime’ anachorism above, though such quirks can surely be forgiven in the presence of China Mieville, who read this morning from a new work about created worlds, metamurder and deaths of gods.

Petra White, a poet, and surely the first guest of the festival to say ‘ablutions’, read two new poems that contemplate no less than the nature of the soul. Her poem ‘Machinery’ was beautiful enough to eclipse the (nevertheless apt) sounds of building works outside.

Well before his normal waking time, ex-Liberal Party member Irfan Yusuf read from Once Were Radicals, a memoir about being a teenage part of ‘the Muslim question’. George Bush, Irfan thanks you for the term ‘Islamofascist’ and your various other charming epithets.

Catch the shining pate of Chris Flynn every day of the main program at The Morning Read. You want the dates? Saturday 22nd, Sunday 23rd, Thursday 27th, Friday 28th, Saturday 29th and, phew, Sunday 30th. Don’t make me write that again.

Estelle Tang, 3000 BOOKS
Festival Blogger