There is a great demand for documentary stories – but non-fiction is struggling.
The new literature festival Sakligt focuses on non-fiction and its challenges.
In fiction, autofiction continues to attract readers, and in podcasts and TV series, documentary-style stories are drawing listeners and viewers. Therefore, it may seem strange that the sale of non-fiction continues to decline. The new three-day festival Sakligt started partly to highlight this contradictory fact.
A completely new festival
Author and editor Magnus Linton, who is affiliated with the Institute for Futures Studies, is part of the program group. He believes that the crisis of non-fiction may partly be due to a reduced space on newspaper culture pages.
Non-fiction books receive fewer reviews, and if an author gets no resonance, there is no reason to write.
Visitors to the festival will, among other things, be able to listen to discussions about gang violence, the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, suicide, and burning climate issues.
The goal is a sharper discussion about the relationship between facts, reality, and storytelling and the role of literary non-fiction in democracy. We live in a "storytelling wave" that is problematic in many ways, says Magnus Linton.
A democracy issue
Our contemporary hunt for authenticity affects not only literature as such but also the entire society, according to Magnus Linton: media development, collective conversation, and ultimately democracy.
There is an enormous commercial and political demand for "documentary" or "real" stories. At the same time, these concepts are becoming increasingly watered down. There are cold facts, but almost all facts need a story to make sense. When that story is created, new realities are created.
TT: In what way?
When facts and storytelling are combined, one is not only dealing with events – one is also creating them. A biography about a famous person affects our collective image of that person. The image of reality becomes part of reality. It's actually trivial, but needs to be discussed and understood better.
The important self-criticism
In a time of fact resistance and "fake news," it is also extra important for non-fiction authors to take a self-critical stance, according to Magnus Linton.
Often, a book, podcast, or documentary film is launched as the "true" story about something – in a definitive form. But it's important to remember that no story is ever complete and final.
Mats Almegård/TT
Non-fiction
TT
Non-fiction is texts written to convey facts. Examples of non-fiction books are reportage, history, biographies, textbooks, debate books, popular science, and travelogues.
Organized by the cultural center Rikstolvan, the Institute for Futures Studies, and Linnaeus University, and takes place over three days: August 2-4. Among other things, overarching questions such as the role of non-fiction in common education and how eyewitness accounts are conveyed in non-fiction will be discussed. But there will also be more specific program points, such as how exile Russian authors depict Putin's Russia and how digital image creation becomes political in reports from Gaza and Ukraine.
Among the participants are: Gellert Tamas, Åsa Wikforss, Gudrun Schyman, and Christian Rück.
