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Star guests headline leaner, earlier Melbourne Writers Festival
By Jason Steger
Michaela McGuire has learnt there’s a reason why an artistic director needs a full year to organise a writers festival. Having changed the dates for this year’s Melbourne Writers Festival from September to May, putting together the event proved “really difficult”.
“Almost all this year’s program came together in just four months,” she says. “Especially after not having a proper break or recovery after the last one. It was definitely a case of running on empty at the start of this process.”
Michaela McGuire says the festival is still feeling and responding to the economic impact of recent times.Credit: Simon Schluter
Despite the curtailed preparations, McGuire has assembled an array of star writers for MWF, which begins on May 4. International guests include the most recent Booker winner, Shehan Karunatilaka , another Booker winner, Bernardine Evaristo, American writers Bill Hayes, Sarah Churchwell, Gabrielle Zevin, Emma Straub, actor Sam Neill, and Irish novelist Claire Keegan.
McGuire is also delighted to have snared the briefly controversial, bestselling American food writer Alison Roman for her first visit to Australia: “It’s tremendously exciting to have a guest of that calibre and popularity. I probably make one of her recipes every week. She made me a better cook, so I can’t wait to meet her and thank her for that.”
The festival changed dates because “we weren’t able to get the right combination of venues available across our traditional dates or anywhere near there, and August and September have never really been the right place in Melbourne or even the global calendar”. Being able to use the Town Hall again “was when we realised we had a viable festival”.
Sam Neill will discuss his new memoir, Did I Tell You This?Credit:
The theme of this year’s MWF is “I’ve Been Away For a While”, even though the festival returned last year for the first time since 2019.
“I think through the last few discomfiting years, a lot of us have felt far away from who we once were,” McGuire said. “Either circumstances, personalities, behaviours, locations have changed. I’m sure I’m not the only one wondering whether I’ll ever feel like that old version of myself, or whether that’s even a desirable thing.”
She said the theme was particularly appropriate for a writers festival.
“Reading is inherently connected with daydreaming and imagination. I think the best outcome for a reader is to get so lost in a book that the rest of the world drops away completely. Until somebody interrupts you and asks, where did you just go? I think that’s something that a lot of us remember from childhood, and if we’re lucky and dedicated to reading enough, that still happens to us today.”
Opening night of the festival has Dreyer, Hayes, Warwick Thornton, Sarah Krasnostein and Jazz Money speaking on the theme. It also includes presentation of the The Age Books of the Year, and will be followed by Paul Kelly performing poems that have inspired him.
Other local writers attending include Fiona McFarlane, Paul Daley, Kate Legge, Pip Williams, Margaret Simons, Sarah Holland-Batt, Kris Kneen, Tracey Lien, Diana Reid, Ronnie Scott, Heather Mitchell, Andre Dao, Maria Tumarkin, Nam Le, Richard Fidler and Stan Grant, who will discuss his new book, The Queen is Dead, about the future of Australia, on the day of King Charles’ coronation.
This year will be the third when the festival has had two First Nations curators, Tony Birch and Ellen van Neerven, working on the program. Indigenous writers appearing include Chelsea Watego, Charmaine Papertalk Green and Kirli Saunders.
McGuire confirmed that the festival was leaner than in previous years.
“We had less time to start with, so that means it necessarily had to be smaller. But it’s also a stabilising measure after a couple of tough years,” she said. The festival was still feeling and responding to the economic impact of recent times.
“We’re presenting a festival that we can absolutely afford to deliver. And we’re hopeful that circumstances will change, that this will work and it will buy us some time to be able to get the sort of funding that we need to be able to do something closer to the size of the festival that we delivered last year.”
The festival program will appear in The Age on Saturday. The Age is a festival partner.
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