Melbourne Writers Festival program announced
The full program for the 2019 Melbourne Writers Festival, which runs from 30 August to 8 September, has been announced.
The program will run under the theme ‘When We Talk About Love’, with sessions that ‘interrogate our love for people, sex, politics and country through conversations, new writing, music and immersive events’.
International guests include Tayari Jones, author of the Women’s Prize–winning novel An American Marriage; Canadian novelist Patrick deWitt; American author, editor and podcast host Daniel Mallory Ortberg; Mexican novelist and journalist Emiliano Monge; bestselling genre writers Val McDermid and John Connolly; American-Filipino novelist and journalist Joanne Ramos; US YA author Becky Albertalli; NYT essayist Sloane Crosley; and Indian author and poet Tishani Doshi.
They join Sonic Youth co-founder and author of the memoir Girl in a Band (Faber) Kim Gordon, Holocaust historian Deborah Lipstadt, and Black Lives Matter activist and author DeRay Mckesson, who were announced as the first international guests in June.
The festival will open with ‘First Hello’ at State Library Victoria’s (SLV) Redmond Barry Reading Room on the evening of 30 Aug, featuring three creative duos telling stories of how they met: children’s book writers Andy and Jill Griffiths; poet Omar Sakr and music writer Hannah Donnelly; and comedian Kitty Flanagan and author and musician Penny Flanagan.
Other highlights include a slate of musical guests, including Ben Folds, Don Walker, Paul Kelly, Tina Arena and Shayne Carter; the book club series, where guests including Brian Nankervis, Judith Lucy and Julian Burnside lead a discussion of their favourite books; and a full-day of romance programming, with authors including Clare Connelly, Anne Gracie, Toni Jordan, Anne Gracie, Melanie Milburne and C S Pacat.
MWF artistic director Marieke Hardy, said: ‘Love stirs our creative spirits, brings us to our knees, inspires songs and sonnets and paintings and volumes, and breaks us into tiny pieces and glues us back together again with gold adhesive.’
‘When we talk about love at MWF19, there will be stories of resilience, of heartbreak and letting go, of family and bodies and home,’ said Hardy.
For more information, visit the MWF website here.
Category: Festivals Local news
