Janet DeNeefe went on a holiday with her family as a young girl to a place that left a significant impression on her. She went back repeatedly, met her future husband there and eventually stayed.
DeNeefe, an Australian-born, restaurateur-turned-festival founder and director, first came to Bali, Indonesia in 1975. She married her husband, Balinese artist and gallery manager Ketut Suardana, in 1984. She says that in her heart, she never really left the Indonesian resort island again.
Her story had to take one more turn, however, before she took on the role for which she is best known in Bali and beyond: as the director of the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival, an annual four-day gathering of world-renowned authors, journalists and their readers that Harper’s Bazaar UK has called “surely the best in the world.”
Starting during Bali’s darkest day
In 2002, DeNeefe had no plans to become a festival founder. Her life was busy enough. She had just finished writing a memoir, ran the Casa Luna restaurant and participated in near-daily community activities revolving around Bali’s unique Hindu faith. She already played multiple pivotal roles in the community of Ubud, a town in Bali’s hinterland that has attracted artists worldwide since as early as the 1920s.
The number of foreigners living there as well as tourists had grown over DeNeefe’s two decades in town. As she remembers it fondly, Ubud had moved on from being a scattered settlement between rice fields with “baby ducks running around everywhere and cows on the main road.”
Then, in 2002, the Bali Bombings left 202 people dead. All the fruitful exchanges between Bali and the world suddenly stopped. She decided to organize a literature festival.
“Something had to be done,” she says. “‘The pen is mightier than the sword’: that became my mantra.”
Global and deeply rooted in the community
During an interview with DeNeefe at the festival, held Oct. 24-27, 2024 and headlined by Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Maria Ressa, she reminisces about the old times and her unique journey in Ubud.
“There were coconut trees all the way to the monkey forest,” she says. “I sort of miss that side of life.”
“Now, though, I understand the things that are possible; the great possibilities and the things that might take a little bit more time,” she adds.
‘The pen is mightier than the sword’: that became my mantra.
The festival started small but soon became an enduring cultural institution. It is now in its 26th year. Over the decades, it featured literary giants such as Margaret Atwood and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.
In the beginning, though, it was almost exclusively an Australian affair. More critical to DeNeefe than making it an international event was ensuring it takes ever-deeper roots in the community. This year, about half of those featured at the festival were Indonesian writers and journalists along with many others based in the country.
A special connection
While the audience is equally international, Indonesians and Australians dominate. Bali is one of the nearest foreign holiday destinations for Aussies, and they also top the visitor charts by a wide margin. Many Australians stay like DeNeefe did, and their presence has kept growing since Indonesia introduced a tax-free, digital nomad visa this past April.
On stage and during casual conversations between panels, many Australians at the festival expressed great fondness for their next-door neighbor to the north despite significant cultural differences.
“Many Australians have life-long friendships with Balinese,” DeNeefe says. “They consider their Balinese friends family, just like their Balinese friends consider them family. For example, during COVID, they were sad that they couldn’t visit and many sent money to look after their friends.”
It is no secret that Bali relies on the revenue it generates through such exchanges. This situation might also play a role in intrapersonal relationships, but most run far more profoundly.
Mixed-heritage ambassador
DeNeefe and her husband have four children. Among them is Laksmi DeNeefe Suardana, who won the Miss Indonesia title in 2022 as the first mixed-heritage Indonesian, making her a trailblazer to others like her.
“Here in Ubud, she is seen as fully Balinese because she’s here all the time,” DeNeefe says about her daughter. “It’s more about the presence than the looks.”
Naturally, DeNeefe had to work harder to become accepted as an Indonesian.
“I just did what I was supposed to do and by doing that, I became accepted,” she said.
At one point, this included the big step of naturalization. Many would refrain from obtaining Indonesian citizenship and renouncing their Australian passport as required by law.
DeNeefe now needs a visa to visit her old home. She never had issues getting it, though, as even those working at the Australian Embassy in Jakarta know she’s nothing less than the “Queen of Ubud.”
