This week on The ABR Podcast, we feature a special commentary by Simon Tedeschi on writers’ festivals. At the level below headlines, writers’ festivals have in recent years undergone a more subtle but pernicious shift, he argues. Whereas they were once sites of complex dialogue and genuine exchange, now ‘both political and literary language ... functions to perform reassurance and calibration’. Tedeschi reflects on a broader ‘societal impatience with ambiguity’ and asks us to consider: ‘What specific cultural function is a writers’ festival intended to perform?’ 

Simon Tedeschi won the ABR Calibre Essay Prize for his essay ‘This Woman My Grandmother’, and he is the author of Fugitive (2022). Here is Simon Tedeschi with ‘“Suppose I am wrong?”: On writers’ festivals, reassurance, calibration, and risk’, published in the April issue of ABR.