First Australian Festival of Russian Traditional and Experimental Literature took place in Sydney in November 2006. Main goal of the Festival is to find Russian-speaking writers in Australia and to introduce them to Russian readers all over the world. Another task of the Festival is to popularise contemporary Russian literature in Australia.
It was not a literary competition but festival with open access for all participants. As a result, more than 40 authors from different Australian cities sent their literary works to the festival. All works were published on festival's website. Then works of the finalists of the festival were reviewed by expert's jury: Vladimir Aristov, Sergei Biryukov, Alexander Bubnov, Tatiana Grauz, Kirill Kobrin, Juri Orlicki and Igor Sid. Authors received most reviews (negative or positive) by experts were declared laureates of the festival. Laureates of the festivals are (in alphabetic order): Vadim Kuzmin (Melbourne), Elena Mikhailik (Sydney) and Tina Vassiliev (Perth).
The program of the festival included 10 events, including bilingual presentation in NSW Writer Centre. As a part of the festival we also published on website as works of Russian classics about Australia («AussiåPoesie») as well as works of Russians emigrants about nature and history of Australia, about evolution of Russian-Australian connections («Geoprose»).
The information about the Festival appeared in Australian and Russian newspapers and websites, in ITAR-TASS (Russia) and NTV (Russian TV). Some works of our authors were published in Russian literary journals: Deti RA, NLO, Innostrannaya literatura, Znamya.
First Australian Festival of Russian Traditional and Experimental Literature is over, but festive occasions of Russian literature in Australia are going on!
For more details see page in Russian.