Sydney Writers Festival: seeking refuge in a world and its words

From Trump to global warming, urgent themes drive this year’s Sydney Writers Festival.

Irish author Anne Enright.

“I like to joke that my most precious possession, which I prize above all my tools and books, and the pictures and antiques that I ­inherited from my family, is my suicide kit, which I keep hidden at home.’’

That’s the opening sentence of a book by a writer who has probed human brains more than most: British neurosurgeon Henry Marsh. In case that seems like an gloomy prognosis, it’s worth noting Marsh is not sure, if the time came, whether he would use the kit.

Marsh’s book, Admissions: A Life in Brain Surgery, is a deeply personal memoir by a veteran ­surgeon who has worked in England and in some hard places, such as the Ukraine and Nepal.

It’s a book that considers an ­existential question: what matters to us in the end? Marsh will talk about it at this week’s Sydney Writers Festival.

I mention him first because I’m always interested in the authors and books that surprise at a ­writers festival, the ones that are more popular with the crowd — and in the book sales tent — than may have first been expected.

Sure, people will flock to see the Man Booker Prize winner Paul Beatty and Australia’s Big ­Little Lies creator Liane Moriarty, but there are always outliers. Another brain man, Canadian psychiatrist Norman Doidge, was just that at this festival, and at ones in other states, two years ago.

And using our brains and thinking about “the end” are hardly activities exclusive to doctors right now. As American writer ­George Saunders says in an interview with me in today’s news pages, we are living through a critical political, economic and ­social moment. He jokes — well almost jokes — that it’s refreshing for an American to come to a ­politically stable country such as Australia.

The theme of the festival is one word, but it’s a complex, changeable one: Refuge. New artistic director Michaela McGuire worked with her outstanding predecessor Jemma Birrell to put together this literary event, which will feature hundreds of writers from Australia and around the world.

McGuire mentions the difficult topics that are on everyone’s lips: Brexit, Donald Trump, the ­refugee crisis, global warming. “In times like these we have a choice. We can give in to the rising zeitgeist of insular thought and intellectual suspicion or we can look to ways to fight it.

“In this festival we look to books, to literature, to new forms of writing, where some of the world’s finest minds have started circling the wagons.

“Now, more than ever, I think readers will be turning to literature as a place of refuge.’’

Here are some highlights from the festival. They’re just my choices, of course, and I know readers will find many more of their own. And because authors do more than one session, it’s worth ­checking the program for any you are interested in seeing.
TODAY
The NSW Premier’s Literary Awards, worth $310,000, will be announced tonight. It’s worth mentioning, too, that a group of festival visitors, including Saunders, will be in a panel discussion at Melbourne’s Wheeler Centre tonight.

TOMORROW
The opening night address this year involves not one author but three: Saunders, Booker Prize-winning Irish novelist Anne Enright and American author Brit Bennett, whose debut novel The Mothers is a bestseller. They will talk about refuge, very differently I imagine.

WEDNESDAY
Now, I’m not self-promoting here, but I will be on stage with Newcastle writer Michael Sala. Indeed, the only person I’m promoting is Sala, as his unsettling family novel The Restorer is superb.

THURSDAY
American physicist and cosmologist Lawrence Krauss is another outlier — as we all are according to his new book The Greatest Story Ever Told — So Far: Why Are We Here? Go along and find out if he has an answer. Please tell me if he does. Liane Moriarty and Di Morrissey, two of our top-selling novelists, are each doing events. Julia Baird will talk about her biography of Queen Victoria and also take part in a panel discussion on the art of biography, alongside David Marr (Patrick White), Troy Bramston (Paul Keating) and English writer AN Wilson, who also has a biography of Queen Victoria on his CV, along with ones on John Milton, Iris Murdoch, Adolf Hitler and Jesus.

If you have liked hearing Kate Grenville talk about her novels at previous festivals, then this one offers an unusual treat: she will discuss her nonfiction book The Case Against Fragrance. If you are going, please note the organisers request you not wear perfume, cologne or other fragrances. You can wear anything you like — though a clerical collar would be brave — to hear Tom Keneally (his new novel is Crimes of the Father), Marr (who did a Quarterly Essay on George Pell, James Miller ­(author of the nonfiction book The Priests) and Louise Milligan ­(Cardinal: The Rise and Fall of ­George Pell) discuss sexual abuse and the Catholic Church. Former governor-general Quentin Bryce did a lot in that role, including write about 50 letters a week. They have been collected in a book, Dear Quentin, which she will talk about with Ita Buttrose.

FRIDAY
Tasmanian writer Robert Dessaix is charming and erudite. He’s been a hard worker but right now he’s interested in doing less. Hear why when he explains his new book The Pleasures of Leisure. Assuming he turns up, that is. The Sydney Town Hall will be location for “American Carnage’’, a dissection of the Trump presidency by Slate editor-in-chief Julia Turner, The Guardian’s US data editor Mona Chalabi, and American authors Saunders and Colson Whitehead (The Underground Railroad). Beatty, the first American to win the Booker, for his novel The Sellout, will join compatriot Roxane Gay (Difficult Women) to work out how to use humour to write about the trauma of history. I wish them luck. Ditto to local authors Frank Moorhouse, Fiona Wright and Briohny Doyle in a session about making a living as a writer.

Who says crime doesn’t pay? That’s not a segue from the how to make a living as a writer event but the headline promoting a chat between Scottish crime writer Ian Rankin and his Australian counterpart Michael Robotham. Speaking of crimes, ones against literature at least, Sydney former banker turned thriller writer John M. Green must be one of the many writers terrified by Trump. The US President certainly makes life tougher for authors who set novels in an unhoped-for future. Perhaps, then, the title of his session is personal: On Why We Should Be Scared Shitless. To be fair, I think it goes on to mention North Korea. Perhaps Green should go along to hear New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman put The Case For Optimism.

Another writer neurologically connected is New Yorker Bill Hayes, who will talk about his life with the love of his life, Oliver Sacks. I’ll resist using a grey matter metaphor to describe Ashleigh Wilson, this newspaper’s arts editor, but his biography of Brett Whiteley is a landmark work. He’ll discuss the art and the artist with Anna Schwartz.

SATURDAY
Paul Beatty does his main event, with the ABC’s Michael Cathcart. Australian writer Maxine Beneba Clarke knows what it’s like to grow up in the racial world that Beatty satirises in his novel, but she did it in real 1980s Australia. Her memoir, The Hate Race, is one of the most powerful books I’ve read in the past 12 months. So is Hannah Kent’s The Good People, set in 19th century rural Ireland. She talks to another fine Australian novelist, Ashley Hay. The aforementioned neurosurgeon Henry Marsh does his main event today and so does another writer exposed to brains: Sydney philosopher Peter Godfrey-Smith, who explores octopus intelligence — and it’s Mensa level — in Other Minds. He will talk to Queenslander Krissy Kneen, and I cannot think of a fiction writer more suitable for facing up to octopi.

The person I’m most looking forward to meeting is the Libyan-American writer Hisham Matar. His memoir, The Return, is a quest for his father, an opposition leader almost certainly executed by the Gaddafi regime. It is my No 1 book of the past year. It won a Pulitzer Prize. But here’s the unexpected thing: I most want to talk to Matar about art galleries. The way he writes about visiting them — and it’s weird — has changed my whole approach to looking at art. By that I mean art on that’s on the wall, not art that’s between book covers. Writers change my ­approach to the latter every day, and I thank them for it. I’ll be on stage with one today, AS Patric, who won the Miles Franklin last year for Black Rock White City. I’ll also be hosting a session on Australian readers and their habits, based on a new research paper by David Throsby. Rock star Jimmy Barnes will do just one gig, and it’s at Parramatta. His memoir Working Class Boy is sad and beautiful.

SUNDAY
Lots of terrific Australian authors out and about, including novelist Melanie Joosten (Berlin Syndrome, Gravity Well), Bernadette Brennan (who has written about Helen Garner), Graeme Simsion, Clementine Ford, Boston Globe art critic Sebastian Smee in a welcome visit home, historian Tom Griffiths, tree house builder Andy Griffiths and Indigenous poet Ali Cobby Eckermann.

The closing address will be ­delivered by feminist American writer Susan Faludi. Her most ­recent book, In the Darkroom, is a remarkable memoir about her father Steven, who at age 76 underwent a sex change operation and became Stefani. Her thoughts on refuge will be worth waiting for.

I want to finish with a story relevant to the theme of this festival. Some years ago at Adelaide Writers week I passed a book-signing queue that was so long it was in danger of spilling onto the busy road outside. People were lining up for hours to spend a few minutes with Vikram Seth, the Indian author of A Suitable Boy. Next to him at the signing table was an Australian writer. His queue was much shorter. I went up to sympathise. He didn’t need it. He was delighted to be there, to be part of a gathering of writers and readers. He was probably tempted to leave his seat and join the Seth queue. That is refuge, too, in an enlightening, connective sense. We are all part of the same world.