Ann Patchett, Pulitzer and Booker Prize winners lead Melbourne Writers Festival line up

Michaela McGuire has had a few tricky years running writers’ festivals. The pandemic put paid to the final one in her stint directing Sydney’s and then her first in Melbourne in 2021. Last year, after shifting the festival’s dates, ongoing difficulties with travel cut back the number of international guests who would appear in person.

And in the lead-up to this year’s events, the Melbourne Writers Festival was shaken by the resignation of deputy chair Dr Leslie Reti over what he called “historically untrue and deeply offensive” material in the online description of a programmed event involving Indigenous and Palestinian poets, and the unrelated departure of interim chief executive Fiona Menzies. McGuire also announced this would be her final MWF as artistic director.

Michaela McGuire says the festival gets only 24 per cent of its funding from government, ‘which is low for an organistion of our size’.Credit: Chris Hopkins

So she is relieved to be able to say the program for this year is the most satisfying she has put together in her career.

Among the guests heading to town in May is the much-loved American writer - and Nashville bookseller – Ann Patchett, who won the Orange Prize for Bel Canto and further acclaim for her recent novel about a family during Covid, Tom Lake.

Last year’s Booker Prize winner, Paul Lynch, and his fellow Irish novelist, Booker-shortlisted Paul Murray, will be discussing their hugely successful novels, Prophet Song and The Bee Sting respectively.

Ann Patchett didn’t want to get stuck in Australia in 2020.Credit: Emily Dorio

Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Cunningham, author of The Hours and most recently, Days – another novel about a family during the pandemic – will feature on the opening night of the festival at the Town Hall, as will the presentation of the 42nd Age Book of the Year awards.

Other international writers heading to Melbourne include British philosopher A.C. Grayling, whose most recent book asks Who Owns the Moon?, Toshikazu Kawaguchi, Japanese author of the bestselling Before the Coffee Gets Cold, and novelist Andrew O’Hagan, author of Mayflies.

Vietnamese-American writer Viet Thanh Nguyen, who won the Pulitzer for The Sympathizer, will discuss his new memoir, while fellow American Bryan Washington will be talking about his fiction and his writing about food. And Lauren Groff will reveal all about her fiction and the books she stocks in her Florida shop, which specialises in titles that have been banned in the US. American essayist Leslie Jamison will be in town with her memoir, Splinters.

Local guests attending include Charlotte Wood, Bruce Pascoe, David Marr, Louise Milligan, Alexis Wright, Christos Tsiolkas, Miles Franklin winner Shankari Chandran, Bri Lee, Melissa Lucashenko, Myfanwy Jones, Tony Birch, Rachelle Unreich and Nam Le.

There are also five events, one involving Indigenous and Palestinian poets, programmed by South Sea Islander rapper Ziggy Ramo and Indigenous and Lebanese writer Mykaela Saunders.

McGuire said that after Reti’s resignation she had been overwhelmed by support from all corners of the industry. “Ultimately, that’s what this program is about – it’s self-determined First Nations programming. It’s not to be interfered with by anyone with outside influence or power. So we had to stand by that.”

She said the festival was not in financial strife but was struggling in the same way it had for the past few years.

“But we did manage a $100,000 surplus last year off the back of doing a very small festival seven months after the one that preceded it. Only 24 per cent of our funding is from government, which is low for an organisation of our size. We have to directly bring in 76 per cent of our annual income for the year, so that’s a huge task.”

Michael Cunningham will speak at the opening of this year’s Melbourne Writers Festival.Credit: Richard Phibbs

Once she started putting the lineup together, it felt different: “There was this real spark around the authors that I started confirming, and then the links that I quickly realised that I could form between these authors.”

It was snaffling an acceptance from Paul Murray, whose novel considers - among other things –notions of resurrection, that let McGuire realise she could give this year’s festival the theme of ghosts.

“Ghosts are a classic literary trope, and many different spectres haunt our lives and imaginations. Political ghosts, the ghosts of past wrongs and mistakes, the ghosts of history,” she said. “We’ll also learn about the preoccupations, themes and stories that have haunted writers throughout their careers.”

McGuire said Patchett was the first author to confirm for this year’s MWF. She had previously accepted an invitation to her Sydney program in 2020.

“I will still never forget the morning in March that I woke up and saw an email from her saying that a doctor friend had advised her that she probably shouldn’t go somewhere that she wouldn’t be comfortable getting stuck for a very long time. And so therefore, she wasn’t going to come to Australia. And she said ‘even though you seem like a nice person to get stuck with’.”

McGuire said last year the audiences had loved a carefully curated still large-scale impact festival of 50 or 60 events. “We had such phenomenal feedback last year, we reached half our box office target within a week. With 50 events there’s no way to hide. Every event and every author has to be able to stand for themselves and they have to make sense as a cohesive whole,” she said.

“It’s the complete opposite to how I used to approach things with a bigger program, where I would just confidently invite 150 Australian authors in August and September and know that I would find combinations to match them all up together with before February.”

The Melbourne Writers Festival program is in The Age on Saturday. The Age is a festival partner.

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