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All the gods smiled on Sydney Writers' Festival, from the climate-change god that blessed last week with warm, sunny weather to the feminist goddess Gloria Steinem, who twice filled Sydney Town Hall with 2000 people, and cast a calm, optimistic aura across the record crowds.
"The festival seemed really on fire on every level," said Jo Dyer, the executive director.
Overall attendances reached 109,398 – about 5000 more than last year – at the 300 live events focused at Walsh Bay and around the city and suburbs. The figure does not include audiences who "attended" via live-streaming to towns around NSW.
Ticket sales increased by almost 10,000 to 62,790 and box-office takings reached more than $1.7 million, both exceeding targets and boosted by almost sold-out events at Sydney Town Hall and the City Recital Hall for authors from Jonathan Franzen to Elena Ferrante (represented by her translator, Ann Goldstein).
"Once again, it was the biggest and most successful festival in terms of attendances and box office," Dyer said. "You can put that down to the calibre of programming, with some real superstars."
Jemma Birrell, the artistic director responsible for the program, said: "There was a feeling that everyone was exhilarated, and a sense of community among the public and the writers, who were going to each other's sessions."
Birrell listed a few highlights: the passionate opening address by British performance poet Kate Tempest (boosted by her appearance on the ABC's Q&A the previous night); Julian Barnes' talk on the art and dangers of biography; Jeanette Winterson's animated reading from her Shakespearian novel The Gap of Time; Jamaican Booker Prize winner Marlon James talking about his time as an exorcist and how Toni Morrison's novel Sula saved his life; and Australian novelist Elizabeth Harrower's first appearance at a writers' festival at the age of 88.
Standing ovations for speakers including Steinem, Indigenous advocate Stan Grant, environmentalist Bob Brown, and US novelist Hanya Yanagihara's closing address about violence in art marked the range and quality of events, Birrell said.
There were new kinds of events: psychotherapist Susie Orbach's public therapy sessions with writers Fiona Wright, Roger Cohen and Richard Glover, who openly shared private stories, and Susan Elderkin's popular 10-minute bibliotherapy sessions, in which she advised on reading to soothe individual problems.
Politics rated highly as always. At the ABC's Insiders Live, host Barrie Cassidy "came out to applause as if he was Mick Jagger", Dyer said, emphasising the power of in-the-flesh events (and of television).
Talking about her TV series and book, The Killing Season, ABC journalist Sarah Ferguson mentioned former Labor senator John Faulkner's "fetish of discretion" about Julia Gillard's challenge to Kevin Rudd's leadership.
Faulkner was first to stand up in the audience Q&A and, to laughter and applause, repeated his refusal to talk but denied he was a fetishist.
It is no surprise that Steinem's memoir, My Life on the Road, was the festival's best-selling book, with more than 500 copies sold.
But second on the list was The Shepherd's Life by James Rebanks, an English sheep farmer with a Twitter following for his stories about a way of life almost unchanged for 600 years.
Gleebooks co-owner David Gaunt said festival book sales were up 15 per cent on last year.
The overall bestseller was the British children's author Liz Pichon, who appeared in the city, Parramatta and Penrith to talk about her best-selling funny series of 10 books about a boy called Tom Gates.
Children took over their own precinct at Walsh Bay on Sunday, with reading, writing, drawing and dancing, and, although admission was free, bookings reduced queues and made it easier for parents to plan the day.
About 30 per cent of festival events were free, down from 50 per cent in past years. Dyer said this change was in response to public requests for guaranteed seats.
The festival is supported by the City of Sydney and the NSW government, as well as triennial funding from the Australia Council and the federal government's Catalyst arts and culture fund for streaming sessions to regional centres and for its podcast channels, as well regional expansion of its children's program in November.
Dyer said the controversial Catalyst was "a great initiative" but "should not have been funded at the expense of the Australia Council. Duplication of bureaucracy is never a good thing".
Noting that many individual writers and other artists missed out on Australia Council grants this year, she said: "There is no point having a great writers' festival if writers aren't able to do their work".