Interview: Frankie Murrey on the Open Book Festival 2014

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Frankie Murrey, the organiser of the Open Book Festival, speaks to Naomi Meyer about the event, which takes place from 17 to 21 September this year.

Frankie Murrey (photo: Facebook, Open Book Cape Town)

Hi Frankie, it’s nearly time for this year's Open Book Festival. What can people look forward to?

We’ve just finalised the programme and it is full of exciting events. There are incredible authors, discussions, books, comics and poetry on this year’s programme! The five-day celebration is something no one should miss – there really is something for everyone and it allows many the opportunity to engage with writers and make new friends.

One of your goals is to showcase South African and international authors and their writing. How do you decide which authors to invite to each year's festival?

All readers have a list (often just in their heads) of authors they would love to meet – ours is just written down and very extensive. Each year we send invitations out to some of the people on that list and then hold thumbs. Our close relationships with the publishers in South Africa ensures that we are up to speed with book releases that launch around festival time, ensuring we have relevant speakers and discussions.

Central to this process, though, is to get the balance of emerging and established authors right, so we invest a fair amount of time in reading debut novels to establish how to bring new voices to the festival for our audience to explore.

Which authors will be attending this year?

It is a long list that includes the likes of fantasy legend Raymond E Feist, Geoff Dyer, Taiye Selasi and Sefi Atta on the international side and Zakes Mda, Prof Kgositsile (South Africa's poet laureate), Zuki Wanner and Niq Mhlongo on the local side. For a complete list of authors, please visit our website (slowly but surely we're getting all the names up there).

Are the events of lesser-known authors supported with enthusiasm by the public?

There is much research and promotion that goes into having people attend events, regardless of how well-known an author is. Open Book takes place in the middle of a city that has various forms of entertainment, from eating out to music concerts. With that in mind, we need to market the festival on general platforms as well as targeted ones – this is of fundamental importance to the success of all events. We are very careful with how we organise the programme, and where possible we use one author's profile to attract an audience to an event that includes less well-known authors. The timing of events is also imperative – we need to make sure that there are not too many events at the same time attracting the same people and that events don't fall at times where the targeted audience is unavailable. The various venues available to Open Book offer different spaces and this is also beneficial.

The Open Book Festival has a social conscience. Please tell us about this year's school library project.

We were committed to putting a library into Westridge High School last year that included 5 000 books. Since then the price of books has increased significantly and as a result, we are still working towards reaching our target. We do not feel it would be right to move to another school without delivering on what we promised. That said, it won't be long before we have reached our target and we will then reach out to another school – we hope to be able to announce this at Open Book in September.

There are also other projects. Please tell our readers about your mentoring programmes for aspiring writers and your fundraising Food Jams.

The Open Book Mentoring Programme ran from three locations this year: Westridge High School, Matthew Goniwe High School and Central Library, and was aimed at aspiring young writers. We wanted to build their confidence in and enthusiasm for writing and this was done through sharing necessary skills. It was an incredible experience for us and those who joined us – we look forward to running them again in 2015 and we will hopefully add a fourth location then.

The idea behind the Food Jams was to reach out to a new audience and share the passion of the Open Book Library Project with them. The events were filled with fun and we were grateful to have raised close to R5 000 for the Westridge Library, which was ama-zing! It is always great when you find partners that help you do work in new and exciting ways! 

What has to happen at Open Book Festival 2014 in order for the festival to be a success?

In terms of numbers we are aiming to top 10 000 people over the course of the five days. Really, though, for me success is seeing people coming out of events looking like the world has opened up to them, watching authors signing books for queues of people, peeking into a venue and seeing an audience that feels South African, watching friendships form that you know will continue far into the future, and seeing new people attend the festival for the first time. All of that and more!

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