Jill Rawnsley, Artistic Director
My first festival experience was in 2001 as an audience member when I became an instant David Malouf fan. I volunteered for the festival that year too, which, as it turned out, was a valuable behind-the-scenes experience.
I put myself through two degrees at the University of Auckland in the 1980s by earning outrageous hourly rates as a typesetter (hey, it was the 1980s), a particularly useful skill to have, and one that fitted well with my love of books and all that goes into creating them. I have an MA (First Class Honours) in English, and worked in publishing for a number of years before leaving to have my first child in 1997. I worked for Oxford University Press when it still had an office in New Zealand, Routledge in London for three years, and then for Macmillan Publishers on returning to New Zealand.
When previous Festival Manager Penny Hansen stepped away as far as the festival would let her (i.e. onto the Board of Trustees) in late 2001, I applied to work for the festival as co-festival manager with Karen Thompson (who now manages events for the University of Auckland Alumni Association). The Festival was biennial at the time, and we were both juggling young children while we set about learning how to manage a festival and run off-season events. I particularly enjoyed working with festival founders and original co-creative directors Peter Wells and Stephanie Johnson on the festival programme. After the 2003 Festival, I took over as Festival Director on my own when Karen very sensibly left to spend more time with her twins and less time on the motorway commuting between the North Shore and Ponsonby. Years and festivals went by, and much to my relief, others joined me in the festival office: notably Shona Gow in 2004, Annaliese Prickett, Mel Curtis and Eleanor Congreve in 2007.
I was lucky to have been chosen to take part in the inaugural ART Venture programme in 2007 alongside nine other (more) creative entrepreneurs. With support from ART, I ‘interned’ at the Hay Festival in 2008, and attended the New Yorker Festival and Toronto International Festival of Authors in 2009, opportunities for which I am truly grateful.
I have worked collaboratively with the directors of the Sydney Writers’ Festival since I arrived – first with Caro Llewellyn, who now directs the PEN International Voices Festival in New York and from whom I learnt a lot, then Wendy Were (currently on maternity leave), and most recently Chip Rolley who is the 2010 Artistic Director. I keep in touch less regularly than I should with the local and international publishing community, and other arts organisations in Auckland and beyond, and have a burgeoning interest in the development of all things digital where writing is concerned. I’ve been watching the saga of the Google settlement with interest, and the advent of e-books with cautious curiosity, and have now got my hands on a Kindle (more about that experience at a later date).
I’m not an original Aucklander. I was born in Napier and moved to Waiheke Island at a formative age, well before Waiheke became the Martha’s Vineyard of the Hauraki Gulf. I moved into “the city” for further schooling and have lived in Auckland since, aside from a few years in London, and – perhaps as a result of living in a basement flat for longer than I could stand – I love living in Auckland and New Zealand. I have a ludicrously supportive husband and two children, aged 12 and 7. I have to confess that having children of my own inspired my determination to introduce programming for school students at the festival in 2009, along with my experience at the Hay Festival where I thought the children’s programme was outstanding.
My hobbies include fending off well-meaning attempts by my personal trainer to convince me to exercise more than twice a week, chauffeuring (see aforementioned children), spending far too much time both on the internet and eating chocolate (although not necessarily in that order). I can’t pretend I fish or sail – I think perhaps I had my fill of that on Waiheke. Maybe there will be a time when such activities will outweigh the joy of lying around reading a book (yeah, right), but I can’t see it fast approaching. I can’t really list reading as a hobby, since I’m meant to be doing that semi-professionally. I do love that moment when you sink into your seat at the cinema or theatre just waiting for the film/dance/play to begin …
Favourite escape: a thriller/crime novel or film (the gorier the better)
Favourite drink: coffee
Favourite place: a beach, anywhere, as long as it’s not too crowded, there’s a breeze and it’s not too hot, and it has plenty of pohutukawa trees providing dappled shade
Started reading: at age 4, thanks Mum and Aunty Margaret
Started walking: in my own good time
What I want for Christmas: three uninterrupted days of lying on various comfortable surfaces (hammock, sand, mattress, couch, grass) with a ready supply of non-melting chocolate treats and a pile of books I don’t “have” to read
Most frequently accessed website: toss up between Nielsen Bookdata and the New Yorker, although also fond of Bookslut, the Dove Grey Reader, Justine Picardie and Graham Beattie’s blogs, Boldtype, the Griffith Review and Flavorpill – well, just about anything that provides a distraction really …
And why is the festival important to you?
A major motivation for me in working on this event is that it’s exactly what I needed in my adolescence, student days, and even 30s, and it just didn’t exist. There’s nothing like being taken out of your own little world into the realm of another’s through words, laughter, inspiring snippets of advice and asides – there’s always something that stays with me from an author appearance.
I don’t idolise authors but I do admire them, as much for their fortitude and perhaps under-acknowledged self-belief as for the beauty in their work. I need beauty. I need to be inspired, enraged, enlightened by others. I need to be challenged to examine and re-examine my beliefs and assumptions. Yes, I could curl up in a room with a computer and pretend I’m part of the world … but every now and then I know I have to leave the room, and a festival seems like as good a time to do that as any.
There are moments during each festival when I feel truly grateful for this job and I know all the late night angsting was worth it … those moments usually involve an uninhibited response by a festival participant or attendee – when someone comes off stage buoyed up by the audience’s response, when an audience member emerges from the darkness, visibly moved by a speaker, saying they just have to go and sit quietly for an hour to take in and reflect on what they’ve just heard. Actually, the best moment for me in 2009 was hearing a student say with unaffected enthusiasm as they scorched up the aisle during the schools programme “I want to be a writer” (with the kind of passion and reverence usually reserved for fantasies about becoming an All Black). I restrained myself from pointing out the potential downsides – the agonising hours spent over the words, the self-doubt, the low pay, the public scrutiny and criticism … but what do I know?
My 7 year old asked me the other day what I wanted to be when I grew up (“she’s already grown up” pointed out the 12 year old). I remember being naïve enough to say out loud in my fifth form class on Waiheke that I wanted to be a journalist. Response: gales of derisive laughter, Bruce. My classmates were right. I’m not thick-skinned enough to be a journalist, and I’m a delinquent around deadlines (why do you think I work on an annual event?), but when I think back to that embarrassing moment, I remember what I imagined I’d like about being a journalist was that you’d get to tell lots of stories, and I love stories.
The festival is a feast of storytelling – some true, some imagined – and I get an enormous amount of pleasure out of watching people share them …
Over and out,
Jill