OzAsia Festival’s 3-day writing and ideas program returns on November 3 – 5 with a huge offering, featuring conversations between poets, novelists, journalists, playwrights, performers, and creatives from around the world.
The 2022 curator of In Other Words is none other than Chinese-Australian writer and comedian, Jennifer Wong. Jennifer was the presenter for the six-part ABC series Chopsticks or Fork?, about Chinese restaurants in regional Australia. She also writes on mental health, food and cultural identity, and has been published by ABC Everyday, ABC New, Broadsheet, Monocle, and SBS News. Jennifer has performed stand-up all over Australia, Edinburgh and Shanghai, and is a regular guest on The Cook Up with Adam Liaw (SBS) and Celebrity Letters and Numbers (SBS).
In the lead up to In Other Words and the OzAsia Festival, I caught up with Jennifer to talk about the event and how she felt when she was first approached to curate this year’s event.
“It was very hard to absorb that it was happening because I had been at the festival in 2021 as a moderator and as someone who participated in the closing night debate, and to think that I would then have the opportunity to bring all these people together was very out of the blue, and a huge surprise.
“Novelty has been so underrated in the past, but I think during and since COVID it has revolutionised to me how much an injection of novelty can make you go, “oh yes! I enjoy being around people and enjoy life”. Doing work like this is so much fun and it has been wonderful to connect with people again whilst I piece together this year’s line up. There are sixty-something speakers that I have been able to connect with.”
Jennifer went on and discussed the themes she followed and how she was able to narrow down her selection to just over sixty speakers across the three days.
“The In Other Words sessions are always about Australia’s engagement with Asia. The festival does bring in writers from overseas, but also tries to focus on local creatives, so it really was about Asian-Australian excellence. We have a few people coming in from overseas, both in person or via Zoom to cover an international aspect, but we have so, so many coming to Adelaide from right across Australia. The program is just bursting with amazing speakers. While curating the speakers, I never once felt like I was running out of people to include; it was the opposite – I had too many to include! The abundance of talent was huge. For example, when I was studying Asian Studies in 2002 at ANU I was reading textbooks that were mostly Asian American based books. But now, there are so many Asian-Australian writers in their books. It’s a really exciting time to have such a great range of literature available these days.”
I was keen to hear from Jennifer: how important are festivals like OzAsia and In Other Words to open important cultural conversations?
“These events and festivals are really, really important. It is more than just a weekend of physical gathering. We have over thirty events featuring over sixty speakers over the three days of All Things In Other Words, but the fact is, these conversations are hopefully the start of something bigger. Who knows what will happen because an author from Perth gets to meet an author from Queensland. We also have Soul Lounge, which is a gathering of poets for 90 minutes, combining open mic with readings. This will bring together people who probably haven’t been in the same room before to work, so it is really exciting that there is this platform for open discussion and for people to meet each other. Often with festivals that are not as focused on Asian-Australian works, you might find yourself to be the only person in the room of an ethnic background. In those situations you often feel that you are there to fill a particular need or role. But by removing that need to perform, when you’re not the only ethnic person in the room or panel, we get to see another side of the conversation that wouldn’t happen anywhere else.”
It’s wonderful how accessible the In Other Words weekend is. There are breakfasts, lunches, morning and afternoon sessions – it really opens the events to so many. Jennifer explained to me how vital this was as part of her overall concept of In Other Words.
“Accessibility is so important to me. I think that there should be as few barriers as possible to people accessing the arts. That is something that I am so stoked for when it comes to the audiences in Adelaide. These sessions for In Other Words are free, except for two events where there is catering involved. We don’t expect people to have read the speakers’ books or know every detail about them, but we just invite people to have an open curiosity and to rock up to the Adelaide Festival Centre, pick up a bubble tea from the bubble tea garden and take part in the amazing conversations that will happen. I love the idea that there is a casualness to this and it is not pretentious or stuffy. We have talks on so many things, from politics to climate change to food to cultural stories. They are all accessible to everyone, just like a conversation you and I would have on the phone or in person over a coffee. This is what our lives are about, these topics, and it should be accessible for people to come in and feel like they are part of the bigger picture.”
The 2022 In Other Words this year will feature over thirty sessions and over sixty speakers across three big days, November 3 – 5. Full program information and bookings to these free events can be found at https://ozasia.adelaidefestivalcentre.com.au/festivals-programs/in-other-words .
Interviewed by: Ben Stefanoff
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