What happens in Bali: Top author sleeps through his own writers festival session

11 hours ago 4

Expectations were high for the opening session at the Ubud Writers & Readers Festival 2025. The festival, staged across the uplands Balinese town of Ubud, was created by Janet DeNeefe and her husband, Ketut Suardana, more than 20 years ago as a reaction to the Bali bombings.

The opening session for 10am was Reflections on Writing a Family Memoir, with superstar Colombian writer Ingrid Rojas Contreras, who suffered amnesia after a cycling accident and later wrote The Man Who Could Move Clouds: A Memoir, and Indonesian popstar and writer Dee Lestari.

Lech Blaine’s memoir, Australian Gospel, won The Age Book of the Year non-fiction award.

But – red flag – the session was the first to be held the morning after the festival’s opening gala, at a palace owned by a member of the Ubud royal family, and the opening gala dinner buffet, staged at De Neefe’s Casa Luna restaurant. Consternation ensued when the third panellist, hot Australian author Lech Blaine, whose family memoir, Australian Gospel, was awarded The Age Book of the Year for non-fiction, hadn’t fronted and the panel was due to start.

Initially, Ubud’s paralysing traffic was blamed as festival talent wrangling staff went into meltdown and were dispatched on a seek-and-locate mission to haul Blaine – the inaugural recipient of a Griffith Review Queensland Writers Fellowship who won the Queensland Premier’s Young Publishers and Writers Award in 2017 – out of bed.

He made it to the latter stages of the session.

Not the first time it has happened at the festival, we are told. The flight is a punish as is the commute from Denpasar to the Ubud foothills. Plus the heat!

Some other speakers were shocked, but surely there is some leeway for artistic licence? I can see Wordsworth fronting up for a 10am romantic poetry session at the Tintern Abbey Writers and Readers Festival, but I wouldn’t be counting on Byron.

CBD later bought the talented author a gin and tonic and can confirm in Ubud they pour long and strong.

Blaine revealed that he and his partner, Archibald Prize-winning artist Laura Jones, who was profiled along with the author in the Good Weekend, are getting married next year. Happy days. Just don’t stage the bucks the night before the wedding.

Bali dance drama

Gina Chick, bestseller author, Alone Australia winner and granddaughter of esteemed writer Charmian Clift, hosted the week’s hottest ticket at the Soulshine wellness retreat, a leisured moneypit of the kind Bali does so well. Her 5Rhthyms dance meditation sesh was a total vibe. CBD spotted celebrity entertainment writer and author Jonathon Moran, editor, author Jenny Valentish and husband actor Frank Magree, who only get married in places with an active volcano (they have done this four times and, yes, this is fact-checked), and Western Australian documentary maker Kirsti Melville.

Alone Australia winner Gina Chick led a dance meditation session for about 50 people.

The session involved a group of about 50, led by Chick, moving around the rooms and dancing like they just don’t care.

Tallest guy in the room was the distinctive US singer Michael Franti, of the band Michael Franti & Spearhead, who recently faced #metoo allegations and was dropped by his management. Franti denied the allegations but admitted to a consensual relationship outside marriage. Turns out they are part of the Ubud ex-pat aristocracy. Franti co-founded and owns Soulshine and his wife Sarah Agah Franti, a festival moderator, who both took to the dance floor with gusto.

A traditional Balinese dance performed during the opening gala for the Ubud Writers & Readers Festival.

Trauma, dance and truth

In the midst of 5Rhythms, prospective author Hayley Jones cut a striking figure, swaying, crying and dancing with herself. Jones was in town to attend writing workshops and generate interest in her book The Signs We Missed.

Jones is a trauma psychologist and her book is about a mother whose young son discloses sexual abuse at daycare. The story is not a novel ripped from the headlines, but a memoir from her own life, and her discovery that the justice system is hopelessly ill-equipped to protect children. To share her story, the mother has chosen to use a pen name, and her campaign for recognition has no end in sight.

Tequila, Toblerone and a spot of netball

ABC evictee Sarah Macdonald, who was sacked from the ABC Mornings gig on ABC Sydney Radio one year ago in a move so cack-handed it had her 2GB rival Ray Hadley scratching his head, was in Ubud to host a session with ABC icon Julia Baird. But Baird was a late cancellation and did not travel to the event.

Former ABC Radio Sydney presenter Sarah Macdonald.

Macdonald has since built a portfolio career, writing for the Herald and The Age , work on 2GB and aged care charity Violet. Oh, and she has written a musical about netball with friend and collaborators Erin McKellar and Narelle Yeo, who suggested the idea the day Macdonald lost her job.

“She turned up with a bottle of tequila and a Toblerone and ‘said f--- them, girlfriend, we are writing a musical’.

“I’ve always loved musicals. It’s been huge fun and joy.”

Netball The Musical has been performed by NIDA students. “It will develop more we hope,” she said. “The core is women playing within the rules, lines and boundaries of netball and life and triumphing because they are ‘here if you need’.”

Envy in Ubud

Of course, we want our old classmates to do well (we are only human, after all) – but not too well (we are only human, after all).

So this columnist (no books to his name) would like to smile widely and acknowledge old high school classmate Jeff Neilson, who has risen to become a University of Sydney academic whose book launch at Ubud I happened to chance upon.

Fortress Farming: Agrarian Transitions, Livelihoods, and Coffee Value Chains in Indonesia is about Indonesia’s rural coffee growing regions, so it should do well in Melbourne.

Stephen Brook was a guest of the Ubud Writers & Readers Festival 2025.