Literary Festivals and Contemporary Book Culture

Millicent Weber is a Lecturer in English at the Australian National University, where she is part of the Reading at the Interface project team. Her work on literary festivals has been published by scholarly journals Continuum and Convergence and literary magazine Overland, and she co-edited the collection Publishing Means Business: Australian Perspectives (2017).

“She proffers a back-to-basics understanding of literary festivals that reconnects the enduring love triangle of author, reader, and book while appealing to the likes of academics, policymakers, and festival organizers. … Literary Festivals and Contemporary Book Culture is a solid step in formulating a comprehensive approach to analyzing literary festivals and their appeal to book enthusiasts and literary critics alike.” (Gloria Mulvihill and Nicholas Shea, Publishing Research Quarterly, 2019)

• 1. Introduction.- 2. Recognising Literary Festivals.- 3. Patterns of Attendance and Experience.- 4. Online and Onsite: Intersections in Embodied and Digital Engagement.- 5. Festival as Policy Vehicle: Creative Industries, Creative Cities and the Creative Class.- 6. Festival as Field: Literary Festivals as Instantiations of Larger Cultural Spaces.- 7. Conclusion: Rules of the Game.