Full 2024 MWF program announced
Melbourne Writers Festival (MWF) has launched the full program for its 2024 festival, to be held in venues across the Melbourne CBD and surrounds from 6 to 12 May.
Outgoing MWF artistic director Michaela McGuire has programmed four days of conversations, talks, workshops, panels and events brought together under this year’s theme of ‘Ghosts: from ghostly characters, ghosts in the machine and ghostwriters to those enduring stories that continue to haunt us’. Festival curators Mykaela Saunders and Ziggy Ramo have ‘programmed five curious, critical and hopeful events that imagine different futures for our world and interrogate what it means to be human.’
International guests include US author Ann Patchett, Japanese author Toshikazu Kawaguchi, Booker Prize–winning Irish novelist Paul Lynch, British philosopher and author A C Grayling, Pulitzer Prize–winning Vietnamese-American author Viet Thanh Nguyen, American author and food writer Bryan Washington, London Review of Books editor-at-large Andrew O’Hagan, and US novelist Lauren Groff. Previously announced international guests include Irish novelist Paul Murray, US essayist Leslie Jamison, and Pulitzer Prize–winning US novelist Michael Cunningham.
The local line-up includes authors Meg Mason, Shankari Chandran, David Marr, Alexis Wright, Tony Birch, Melissa Lucashenko, Steve Mushin, Grace Yee and Maxine Beneba Clarke, as well as Australian of the Year and memoir writer Rosie Batty, and author Bruce Pascoe and his partner Lyn Harwood, with whom Pascoe wrote Black Duck: A year at Yumburra.
McGuire said: ‘After nine incredibly rewarding years programming writers festivals, I’ve never been more proud of a line-up than this one. Old and new favourites come together in smart and surprising combinations to discuss the ghosts of history, past mistakes, past selves and the stories that haunt them. I count myself as an extremely fortunate literary citizen of Melbourne to be in the finest possible company this May.’
The special event Ghosts: An Evening of Storytelling features the winner of the 2024 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award Indigenous Prize for Writing Daniel Browning, author and journalist Louise Milligan, Irish author Sinéad Gleeson, along with Nguyen and Jamison.
For the John Button Oration, journalist Laura Tingle examines the ‘deterioration of national debate in Australia and the lost art of civil discourse before offering her sage advice as to what—if anything—we can do about it’.
Festival sessions include Jamison and Nam Le in a conversation about their crafts; US author Lauren Groff and Charlotte Wood joining Ailsa Piper to discuss isolated characters in their new novels; Christos Tsiolkas and Washington sharing a conversation about putting romance to the page; and novelists Birch, Groff and Patchett revealing the ‘inappropriate’ texts of their early reading lives and the books they’d encourage readers of all ages to pick up.
In the First Knowledges: Innovation session, authors Ian J McNiven and Lynette Russell offer insight into millennia-spanning First Nations social and spiritual activities, trading strategies and land-management practices. In Who Gets to Be Human?, Ramo talks with Munanjahli and South Sea Islander author Chelsea Watego, Egyptian-Australian writer Lamisse Hamouda, and artist and ‘third-culture kid of Wiradjuri and Filipino blood’ Mo’Ju, to ‘unpack 235 years of colonisation’. In the Let It Bring Hope session, featuring Birch and Samah Sabawi, Jeanine Leane and Micaela Sahhar, and Nayuka Gorrie and Sara Saleh, ‘Aboriginal and Palestinian poets read new works to each other in affirmation of commitment, care and solidarity’.
In other sessions, AI experts Marek Kowalkiewicz, Toby Walsh and Margaret Cameron will consider the potential of AI to make great art in The Ghost in the Machines; authors Siang Lu and Laura Jean McKay speak about their works that seek to push the limits of reality and explore modernity; authors Bri Lee and Liam Pieper explore their ‘scathingly funny new novels that reveal the tensions of money, power and love in the arts’; authors Katherine Brabon, Nadine J Cohen and Myfanwy Jones discuss their new novels, each of which casts water as ‘a motif in stories of people finding redemption from the griefs and ghosts of the past’; and prize-winning Gudanji/Wakaja writer Debra Dank and Tracks author Robyn Davidson discuss their new memoirs about memory, land and family.
Sessions for younger readers in Children’s Quarter of State Library Victoria include author Joel McKerrow performing poems, sharing stories and talking about his latest graphic novel, followed by author Sofie Laguna and illustrator Marc McBride, who will offer young readers a glimpse into developing their new story about kindness, family and friendship. The schools program will run from 6 to 9 May.
The full program can be viewed at mwf.com.au.
Category: Local news
