In an unusual move, the Melbourne Writers Festival won’t allow the audience to ask questions at its sessions – and some festivalgoers are breathing a sigh of relief.
Here’s a question for you: should people in the audience at writers festivals be allowed to ask questions? The Melbourne Writers Festival thinks not. This year, they will not allocate any time for Q&A in their events.
Michaela McGuire is artistic director of Melbourne Writers Festival, which decided not to allow questions from the audience.These people are fed up with irrelevant, intrusive, hostile or just plain silly questions. They have zero tolerance for nervous wafflers, gushing fans, nitpicking critics, wannabe authors asking for advice or worst of all, passionate ranters who see the microphone as an excuse to earbash us all with their obsessions.
Once I chaired a session of three international novelists, plus a very famous and highly controversial evolutionary biologist. When I saw a long queue of eager young men lining up behind the microphone, I had to ask whether anybody wanted to direct a question to somebody who was not Richard Dawkins.But during these many years, I’ve noticed something else. By and large, audience questions have got better. Readers are canny, respectful but not fawning, and they’ve done their homework.
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