THE book has closed on this year\u2019s Queenscliffe Literary Festival (QLF), with the festival\u2019s committee conceding earlier this month that they could not hold a third weekend of events.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Organisers are now turning their attention to the 2022 festival.<\/p>\n
\u201cFrom May through to now, we\u2019ve been hoping to have something,\u201d QLF committee president Pauline Nunan said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had two very successful weekends, and we were hoping we could reschedule the third weekend, but as time has gone on, it\u2019s not looking hopeful, and we just thought it\u2019s better to pull the plug.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe other thing is we had someone coming from Sydney, so she obviously can\u2019t come, and others were from Melbourne, so it\u2019s just not looking hopeful at this stage, and goodness knows what numbers would be allowed, so we just thought it\u2019s better to make a decision and leave it for this year, which is disappointing.<\/p>\n
\u201cNevertheless, we had two good weekends, so we\u2019re grateful to have had that, in retrospect.<\/p>\n
\u201cLast year we had to cancel completely, so at least we got two weekends out of three.\u201d<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
These tickets can now be fully refunded, or donated back to QLF to support the 2022 festival.<\/p>\n
\u201cAlready, quite a few very generous and kind people have said they\u2019ll donate their tickets, and we\u2019re very happy about that, of course,\u201d Ms Nunan said. \u201cIt makes us feel warm and snug to have kind people doing that when we\u2019ve had such a disappointing year.\u201d<\/p>\n
She said the committee was optimistic about the running of next year\u2019s festival.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think here in the Borough of Queenscliffe we\u2019ve all been pretty hopeful because we\u2019re the most highly vaccinated place in the country, but we\u2019re also dependent on people coming from other places \u2013 it\u2019s just so difficult to know. For me, the main thing is whether we can get our authors.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
THE book has closed on this year\u2019s Queenscliffe Literary Festival (QLF), with the festival\u2019s 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 […]<\/p>\n