MWF announces Cunningham, Murray and Jamison as first guests

Melbourne Writers Festival (MWF) has announced the first guests for the 2024 event, which will take place from 6 to 12 May.

Pulitzer Prize–winner Michael Cunningham, Booker-nominee Paul Murray and New York Times bestselling author Leslie Jamison will appear at this year’s festival, with tickets to sessions with the three international authors on sale from today.

Cunningham will open the festival in a one-off in-conversation event with Ailsa Piper at Melbourne Town Hall on Wednesday 8 May, where the author will introduce Day—‘a family saga that follows the lives of three haunted New Yorkers around an unnamed yet familiar pandemic’—which is Cunningham’s first novel in nearly 10 years. Murray, author of the Booker-nominated tragicomedy The Bee Sting, will appear in conversation with Michael Williams at the Athenaeum on Friday 10 May, while US novelist and essayist Jamison will discuss Splinters, her ‘blazing memoir of divorce, motherhood, art and new love’, in conversation with Rebecca Harkins-Cross at the State Library Victoria’s Conversation Quarter on Sunday 12 May.

‘This year’s Melbourne Writers Festival welcomes the biggest and most exciting literary lineup to the city in a very long time,’ said MWF artistic director Michaela McGuire. ‘We couldn’t wait to share a first look at the extraordinary cohort of international writers who’ll be appearing at Melbourne Writers Festival this May.’

The full 2024 Melbourne Writers Festival program will be announced on Thursday 21 March.

Pictured (L to R): Paul Murray, Leslie Jamison, Michael Cunningham.

Category: Local news