Book closes on 2021 literary festival

THE book has closed on this year’s Queenscliffe Literary Festival (QLF), with the festival’s committee conceding earlier this month that they could not hold a third weekend of events.

The 2021 edition of the annual festival held two record-breaking weekends in venues across Queenscliff and Point Lonsdale in May and planned to stage Weekend 3 on a new date in October.

Organisers are now turning their attention to the 2022 festival.

“From May through to now, we’ve been hoping to have something,” QLF committee president Pauline Nunan said.

“We had two very successful weekends, and we were hoping we could reschedule the third weekend, but as time has gone on, it’s not looking hopeful, and we just thought it’s better to pull the plug.

“The other thing is we had someone coming from Sydney, so she obviously can’t come, and others were from Melbourne, so it’s just not looking hopeful at this stage, and goodness knows what numbers would be allowed, so we just thought it’s better to make a decision and leave it for this year, which is disappointing.

“Nevertheless, we had two good weekends, so we’re grateful to have had that, in retrospect.

“Last year we had to cancel completely, so at least we got two weekends out of three.”

When Weekend 3 was postponed in May with the reintroduction of COVID-19 restrictions, organisers asked QLF ticket holders to hang onto their tickets in the hope that those events would eventually be restaged.

These tickets can now be fully refunded, or donated back to QLF to support the 2022 festival.

“Already, quite a few very generous and kind people have said they’ll donate their tickets, and we’re very happy about that, of course,” Ms Nunan said. “It makes us feel warm and snug to have kind people doing that when we’ve had such a disappointing year.”

She said the committee was optimistic about the running of next year’s festival.

“I think here in the Borough of Queenscliffe we’ve all been pretty hopeful because we’re the most highly vaccinated place in the country, but we’re also dependent on people coming from other places – it’s just so difficult to know. For me, the main thing is whether we can get our authors.”