Melbourne Writers Festival - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The Melbourne Writers Festival is an annual literary festival held in the Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

n city of Melbourne

Melbourne

Melbourne is the capital and most populous city in the state of Victoria, and the second most populous city in Australia. The Melbourne City Centre is the hub of the greater metropolitan area and the Census statistical division—of which "Melbourne" is the common name. As of June 2009, the greater...

History

The festival was founded in 1986 as a joint initiative between the Melbourne International Festival of the Arts

Melbourne International Arts Festival

Melbourne Festival is a celebration of dance, theatre, music, visual arts, multimedia, outdoor and free events held for 17 days each October in a number of venues across Melbourne, Australia.-History:...

and the City of Melbourne

City of Melbourne

The City of Melbourne is a Local Government Area in Victoria, Australia, located in the central city area of Melbourne. The city has an area of 36 square kilometres and has an estimated population of 93,105 people. The city's motto is "Vires acquirit eundo" which means "She gathers strength as she...

. It was organised as a sister festival to the Spoleto Festival, and was known in the first year as Spoleto Melbourne Festival of Three Worlds. It was held at the Athenaeum Theatre

Athenaeum, Melbourne

The Athenaeum or Melbourne Athenaeum is one of the oldest public institutions in Victoria, Australia, founded in 1839. The first President was Captain William Lonsdale, the first Patron was the Superintendent of Port Philip, Charles La Trobe and the first books were donated by Vice-President Henry...

. The Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards

Victorian Premier's Literary Award

The Victorian Premier's Literary Awards were created by the Victorian Governmentwith the aim of raising the profile of contemporary creative writing and Australia's publishing industry....

were presented as part of the festival for the first time.

In 1990, the festival was no longer known under the Spoleto name, and became a part of the Melbourne International Arts Festival

Melbourne International Arts Festival

. It also moved venues form the Athenaeum

Athenaeum, Melbourne

and Kino Cinemas to the Malthouse Theatre. By 1992 the festival had over 10,000 attendees, and expanded its program to include events in Ballarat. Simon Clews was appointed the new festival director, a post he held until 2005. The inaugural Keynote Address was given by Clive James

Clive James

Clive James, AM is an Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet and memoirist, best known for his autobiographical series Unreliable Memoirs, for his chat shows and documentaries on British television and for his prolific journalism...

in 1996 to coincide with the festival’s 10th anniversary celebrations.

In 1998 the festival was held autonomously from the Melbourne International Arts Festival

Melbourne International Arts Festival

, taking place in August rather than October. The Age

The Age

The Age is a daily broadsheet newspaper, which has been published in Melbourne, Australia since 1854. Owned and published by Fairfax Media, The Age primarily serves Victoria, but is also available for purchase in Tasmania, the Australian Capital Territory and border regions of South Australia and...

newspaper became the festival’s principal sponsor, the festival taking the name 'The Age Melbourne Writers Festival'. The awarding of The Age Book of the Year

The Age Book of the Year

The Age Book of the Year Awards are annual literary awards presented by Melbourne's The Age newspaper. The awards were first presented in 1974. Since 1998 they have been presented as part of the Melbourne Writers Festival...

replaced the Premier’s Literary Awards

Victorian Premier's Literary Award

The Victorian Premier's Literary Awards were created by the Victorian Governmentwith the aim of raising the profile of contemporary creative writing and Australia's publishing industry....

which stayed with the International Arts festival

Melbourne International Arts Festival

.

By 2001 the festival had instituted Internet broadcasts and transcripts of some sessions, Auslan

Auslan

Auslan is the sign language of the Australian deaf community. The term Auslan is an acronym of "Australian sign language", coined by Trevor Johnston in the early 1980s, although the language itself is much older...

at others, and was attracting an estimated 25,000 in attendances over the 10 days of the festival. In 2002, ‘The Last Word’ was introduced as a counterpoint to the Keynote address that opens the festival. That year, a parody of the festival program also appeared, attacking the supposed elitism of the festival. In 2004 the Festival venues expanded to include the Heide Museum of Modern Art

Heide Museum of Modern Art

Heide Museum of Modern Art, more commonly just Heide, is a contemporary art museum located in Bulleen, east of Melbourne, Australia. Established in 1981, the museum comprises several detached buildings and surrounding gardens & parklands of historical importance that are used as gallery spaces to...

and the State Library of Victoria

State Library of Victoria

The State Library of Victoria is the central library of the state of Victoria, Australia, located in Melbourne. It is on the block bounded by Swanston, La Trobe, Russell, and Little Lonsdale streets, in the northern centre of the central business district...

. 2005 saw the 20th anniversary celebrations of the festival, and a collaboration with the Australian Centre for the Moving Image

Australian Centre for the Moving Image

The Australian Centre for the Moving Image, or ACMI, is dedicated to the moving image in all its forms. It is located in Federation Square, in Melbourne, Australia, across four levels of the Alfred Deakin Building...

that continues today.

Rosemary Cameron replaced Simon Clews as festival director in late 2005 . There was a 60% growth MWF Program 2007 in the number of events held, which expanded to include workshops and master classes. Events were held at Federation Square

Federation Square

Federation Square is a civic centre and cultural precinct in the city of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia....

for the first time, and the festival commissioned the Playworks theatre company to produce four one-act plays to be performed during the festival. A ‘Missing Chair’ was instituted to represent those writers unable to attend due to persecution. It became a precursor to the political nature of the festival in 2006, with the Last Word debate over the Aboriginal Stolen Generation

Stolen Generation

The Stolen Generations were the children of Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander descent who were removed from their families by the Australian Federal and State government agencies and church missions, under acts of their respective parliaments...

producing much controversy. The festival became carbon neutral in 2007. 2007 continued to show a growth in program and audiences, with the schools program reaching more than 7,000 students. This was also the last year for the festival at the CUB Malthouse Theatre.

In 2008 , as the annual festival was moved to Federation Square. Using the BMW Edge and the two ACMI cinemas, the festival also set up its own box office, and increased audiences by 12.5% to 45,000, with income increasing by 40%. With a bigger program, 20% of the program was free. The partnership with The Age was reworked and the festival removed "The Age" from its designation. In 2009, visits increased to 50,000. Bernhard Schlink was the keynote speaker, and the Big Ideas at the RMIT Capitol Theatre hosted such guests as Christine Nixon, Tony Abbott, Paul Kelly, Bob Stein, Bill Kelty and Anthony Beevor. The schools program grew from 10,700 to 12,000 students, and a songwriters stream took place at Toff in Town. In 2009 it was announced that Steve Grimwade would take over as the festival's director for the 2010 festival.

Past International Guests

Past International guests have included Douglas Coupland

Douglas Coupland

Douglas Coupland is a Canadian novelist. His fiction is complemented by recognized works in design and visual art arising from his early formal training. His first novel, the 1991 international bestseller Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture, popularized terms such as McJob and...

, Paulo Coelho

Paulo Coelho

Paulo Coelho is a Brazilian lyricist and novelist.-Biography:Paulo Coelho was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. He attended a Jesuit school. As a teenager, Coelho wanted to become a writer. Upon telling his mother this, she responded with "My dear, your father is an engineer. He's a logical,...

, Dave Eggers

Dave Eggers

Dave Eggers is an American writer, editor, and publisher. He is known for the best-selling memoir A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and for his more recent work as a screenwriter. He is also the co-founder of the literacy project 826 Valencia.-Life:Eggers was born in Boston, Massachusetts,...

, Elizabeth Jolley

Elizabeth Jolley

Monica Elizabeth Jolley AO was an English-born writer who settled in Western Australia in the late 1950s. She was 53 when her first book was published, and she went on to publish fifteen novels , four short story collections and three non-fiction books, publishing well into her 70s and achieving...

, Angela Carter

Angela Carter

Angela Carter was an English novelist and journalist, known for her feminist, magical realism, and picaresque works...

, Andre Brink

André Brink

André Philippus Brink, OIS, is a South African novelist. He writes in Afrikaans and English and is a Professor of English at the University of Cape Town....

, Richard Ford

Richard Ford

Richard Ford is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist and short story writer. His best-known works are the novel The Sportswriter and its sequels, Independence Day and The Lay of the Land, and the short story collection Rock Springs, which contains several widely anthologized stories.-Early...

, Seamus Heaney

Seamus Heaney

Seamus Heaney is an Irish poet, writer and lecturer. He lives in Dublin. Heaney has received the Nobel Prize in Literature , the Golden Wreath of Poetry , T. S. Eliot Prize and two Whitbread prizes...

, Vikram Seth

Vikram Seth

Vikram Seth is an Indian poet, novelist, travel writer, librettist, children's writer, biographer and memoirist.-Early life:Vikram Seth was born on 20 June 1952 to Leila and Prem Seth in Calcutta...

, Annie Proulx, Isabel Allende

Isabel Allende

Isabel Allende Llona is a Chilean writer with American citizenship. Allende, whose works sometimes contain aspects of the "magic realist" tradition, is famous for novels such as The House of the Spirits and City of the Beasts , which have been commercially successful...

, Roddy Doyle

Roddy Doyle

Roddy Doyle is an Irish novelist, dramatist and screenwriter. Several of his books have been made into successful films, beginning with The Commitments in 1991. He won the Booker Prize in 1993....

, Zadie Smith

Zadie Smith

Zadie Smith is a British novelist. To date she has written three novels. In 2003, she was included on Granta's list of 20 best young authors...

, Frank McCourt

Frank McCourt

Francis "Frank" McCourt was an Irish-American teacher and Pulitzer Prize–winning writer, best known as the author of Angela’s Ashes, an award-winning, tragicomic memoir of the misery and squalor of his childhood....

, A. S. Byatt

A. S. Byatt

Dame Antonia Susan Duffy, DBE is an English novelist, poet and Booker Prize winner...

, Oscar Hijuelos

Oscar Hijuelos

Oscar Jerome Hijuelos is an American novelist. He is the first Hispanic to win a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.- Early life and career :...

, Alain de Botton

Alain de Botton

Alain de Botton is a Swiss writer, television presenter, and entrepreneur, resident in the UK.His books and television programs discuss various contemporary subjects and themes in a philosophical style, emphasizing philosophy's relevance to everyday life. In August 2008, he was a founding member...

, Melvyn Bragg

Melvyn Bragg

Melvyn Bragg, Baron Bragg FRSL FRTS FBA, FRS FRSA is an English broadcaster and author best known for his work with the BBC and for presenting the The South Bank Show...

, Louis Sachar

Louis Sachar

Louis Sachar is an American author of children's books who is best known for the Sideways Stories From Wayside School book series and the 1998 novel Holes, for which Sachar won a National Book Award and the Newbery Medal...

, Terry Jones

Terry Jones

Terence Graham Parry Jones is a Welsh comedian, screenwriter, actor, film director, children's author, popular historian, political commentator, and TV documentary host. He is best known as a member of the Monty Python comedy team....

, John Ashbery

John Ashbery

John Lawrence Ashbery is an American poet. He has published more than twenty volumes of poetry and won nearly every major American award for poetry, including a Pulitzer Prize in 1976 for his collection Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror. But Ashbery's work still proves controversial...

, J. M. Coetzee, Ian Rankin

Ian Rankin

Ian Rankin, OBE, DL , is a Scottish crime writer. His best known books are the Inspector Rebus novels. He has also written several pieces of literary criticism.-Background:He attended Beath High School, Cowdenbeath...

, Xue Xinran, Ben Okri

Ben Okri

Ben Okri OBE FRSL is a Nigerian poet and novelist. Okri has become the leading figure of his generation of Nigerian writers who have largely abandoned the social and historical themes of Chinua Achebe, and brought together modernist narrative strategies and Nigerian oral and literary...

, Edna O'Brien

Edna O'Brien

Edna O'Brien is an Irish novelist and short story writer whose works often revolve around the inner feelings of women, and their problems in relating to men and to society as a whole.-Life and career:...

, Bill Bryson

Bill Bryson

William McGuire "Bill" Bryson, OBE, is a best-selling American author of humorous books on travel, as well as books on the English language and on science. Born an American, he was a resident of Britain for most of his adult life before moving back to the US in 1995...

, Ruth Rendell

Ruth Rendell

Ruth Barbara Rendell, Baroness Rendell of Babergh, CBE, , who also writes under the pseudonym Barbara Vine, is an English crime writer, author of psychological thrillers and murder mysteries....

, Joanna Trollope

Joanna Trollope

Joanna Trollope OBE , is an English novelist.-Life:Joanna Trollope was educated at Reigate County School for Girls followed by St Hugh's College, Oxford. From 1965 to 1967, she worked at the Foreign Office...

, Graham Swift

Graham Swift

Graham Colin Swift FRSL is a British author. He was born in London, England and educated at Dulwich College, London, Queens' College, Cambridge, and later the University of York. He was a friend of Ted Hughes...

, Margaret Atwood

Margaret Atwood

Margaret Eleanor Atwood, is a Canadian poet, novelist, literary critic, essayist, and environmental activist. She is among the most-honoured authors of fiction in recent history; she is a winner of the Arthur C...

, A C Grayling, Andrew Davies

Andrew Davies (writer)

Andrew Wynford Davies is a British author and screenwriter. He was made a Fellow of BAFTA in 2002.-Education and early career:...

and Robert Muchamore

Robert Muchamore

Robert Kilgore Muchamore is an English author, most notable for writing the CHERUB and Henderson's Boys novels.-Prior to writing:...

Past Local Guests

Tim Winton

Timothy John "Tim" Winton , is an Australian novelist and short story writer.-Life:Winton was born in Perth, Western Australia, but moved at a young age to the regional city of Albany....

Clive James

, Peter Carey, Germaine Greer

Germaine Greer

Germaine Greer is an Australian writer, academic, journalist and scholar of early modern English literature, widely regarded as one of the most significant feminist voices of the later 20th century....

, Thea Astley

Thea Astley

Thea Astley was an Australian novelist and short story writer. She was a prolific writer who was published for over 40 years from 1958. At the time of her death, she had won more Miles Franklin Awards, Australia's major literary award, than any other writer...

, Nick Earls

Nick Earls

Nick Earls is an award-winning novelist from Brisbane, Australia. He writes humorous popular fiction about everyday life, and is often compared to Nick Hornby...

, Thomas Keneally

Thomas Keneally

Thomas Michael Keneally, AO is an Australian novelist, playwright and author of non-fiction. He is best known for writing Schindler's Ark, the Booker Prize-winning novel of 1982 which was inspired by the efforts of Poldek Pfefferberg, a Holocaust survivor...

, Shane Maloney

Shane maloney

Shane Maloney born in Hamilton, Victoria is a Melbourne author best known as the creator of the Murray Whelan series of crime novels.-Life and career:...

, Marion Halligan

Marion Halligan

Marion Mildred Halligan AM is an Australian writer and novelist. She was born and educated in Newcastle, New South Wales, and worked as a school teacher and journalist before publishing her first short stories. Halligan has served as chairperson of the Literature Board of the Australia Council and...

, Peter Temple

Peter Temple

Peter Temple is an Australian crime fiction writer.Formerly a journalist and journalism lecturer, Temple turned to fiction writing in the 1990s. His Jack Irish novels are set in Melbourne, Australia, and feature an unusual lawyer-gambler protagonist...

, Helen Garner

Helen Garner

Helen Garner is an award-winning Australian novelist, short-story writer, screenwriter and journalist.-Life:Garner was born in Geelong, Victoria, the eldest of six children. She attended Manifold Heights State School, Ocean Grove State School and then The Hermitage in Geelong...

, Morris Gleitzman

Morris Gleitzman

Morris Gleitzman is an English-born Australian writer. He is one of Australia's most successful writers.Morris Gleitzman has also gained recognition for sparking an interest in politically-controversial children's books like Two Weeks with the Queen.He has collaborated on children's series with...

, Danny Katz

Danny Katz (columnist)

Danny Katz is a Canadian-born, Jewish Australian columnist and author who writes for The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald. His columnn is also syndicated in The West Australian. He is the Modern Guru in the Good Weekend magazine.-External links:*** * * ****...

, Amy Witting

Amy Witting

Amy Witting was the pen name of an Australian novelist and poet born Joan Austral Fraser She was widely acknowledged as one of Australia's "finest fiction writers, whose work was full of the atmosphere and colour or times past".-Life:Amy Witting was born in the Sydney suburb of Annandale, and was...

, Les Murray

Les Murray (poet)

Leslie Allan Murray, AO , known as Les Murray, is an Australian poet, anthologist and critic. His career spans over forty years, and he has published nearly 30 volumes of poetry, as well as two verse novels and collections of his prose writings...

, Tim Flannery

Tim Flannery

Timothy Fridtjof Flannery is an Australian mammalogist, palaeontologist, environmentalist and global warming activist....

, Henry Reynolds

Henry Reynolds

Henry Reynolds may refer to:* Henry Reynolds , Australian historian* Henry Reynolds , English poet and critic of the seventeenth century* Henry Reynolds , English World War I recipient of the Victoria Cross...

, Kathy Lette

Kathy Lette

Kathy Lette is an Australian author who has written a number of bestselling books.Born in Sydney's southern suburbs, she first attracted attention in 1979 as the coauthor of Puberty Blues, a strongly autobiographical, proto-feminist teen novel about two 13-year-old southern suburbs girls...

, Kate Grenville

Kate Grenville

Kate Grenville is one of Australia's best-known authors. She's published nine novels, a collection of short stories, and four books about the writing process....

, David Malouf

David Malouf

David George Joseph Malouf is an acclaimed Australian writer. He was awarded the Neustadt International Prize for Literature in 2000, his 1993 novel Remembering Babylon won the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award in 1996, he won the inaugural Australia-Asia Literary Award in 2008, and he was...

, Robert Manne

Robert Manne

Robert Manne is a professor of politics at La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia.Born in Melbourne, Manne's earliest political consciousness was formed by the fact that his parents were Jewish refugees from Europe and his grandparents were victims of the Holocaust...

, Robert Drewe

Robert Drewe

Robert Duncan Drewe is an Australian journalist, novelist and short story writer.-Biography:Drewe was born in Melbourne, but moved with his family to Perth, Western Australia at the age of six. He was educated at Hale School, and in his final year was appointed School Captain...

, Drusilla Modjeska

Drusilla Modjeska

- Life :Drusilla Modjeska was born in England and lived in Papua New Guinea before arriving in Australia in 1971. She studied at the Australian National University and the University of New South Wales completing a PhD which was published as Exiles at Home: Australian Women Writers 1925-1945...

, and Dorothy Porter

Dorothy Porter

Dorothy Featherstone Porter was an Australian poet.-Early life:Porter was born in Sydney. Her father was barrister Chester Porter and her mother, Jean, was a high school chemistry teacher. Porter attended the Queenwood School for Girls...

Keynote Adresses

1996 Clive James

Clive James

'The Idea of a National Culture'

1997 Germaine Greer

Germaine Greer

'Sex, Angst and the Millennium'

1998 Paul Davies

Paul Davies

Paul Charles William Davies, AM is an English physicist, writer and broadcaster, currently a professor at Arizona State University as well as the Director of BEYOND: Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science...

'Aliens: Are They Really Out there?'

1999 Geoffrey Robertson QC

2000 Patrick Dodson

Patrick Dodson

Patrick Dodson is a Yawuru man from Broome, Western Australia, he is a former Chairman of the "Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation", a former Commissioner into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody and former Roman Catholic priest. He was the winner of the 2008 Sydney Peace Prize...

2001 Bill Bryson

Bill Bryson

'Notes From all Over'

2002 Oliver Sacks

Oliver Sacks

Oliver Wolf Sacks, CBE , is a British neurologist and psychologist residing in New York City. He is a professor of neurology and psychiatry at Columbia University, where he also holds the position of Columbia Artist...

'Stinks and Bangs: A Chemical Boyhood'

2003 Tariq Ali

Tariq Ali

Tariq Ali , , is a British Pakistani military historian, novelist, journalist, filmmaker, public intellectual, political campaigner, activist, and commentator...

'War, Empire, Resistance: Welcome to the 21st Century

2004 Jose Ramos-Horta 'War and Peace, The Middle East and Iraq Cauldrons, Fundamentalism, Terrorism – Is there Hope?'

2005 His Excellency John Ralston Saul CC

John Ralston Saul

John Ralston Saul, CC is a Canadian author, essayist, and President of International PEN.As an essayist, Saul is particularly known for his commentaries on the nature of individualism, citizenship and the public good; the failures of manager-, or more precisely technocrat-, led societies; the...

'Collapse of Globalism'

2006 Tim Flannery

Tim Flannery

Timothy Fridtjof Flannery is an Australian mammalogist, palaeontologist, environmentalist and global warming activist....

on Global Warming

2007 Clive James

Clive James

'Our inextinguishable fortune'

2008 Germaine Greer

Germaine Greer

'On Rage'

Last Word

2002 Germaine Greer

Germaine Greer

'Sex, lies and Secret Women's Business'

2003 Annie Proulx 'Conversations with Annie Proulx'

2004 Irshad Manji

Irshad Manji

Irshad Manji is a Canadian author, journalist and an advocate of "reform and progressive" interpretation of Islam. Manji is director of the Moral Courage Project at the Robert F...

'Confessions of a Muslim Reformer: Why I Fight for Women, Jews and Pluralism'

2005 Julian Burnside QC

Julian Burnside

Julian William Kennedy Burnside AO QC is an Australian barrister, human rights and refugee advocate, and author. He is known for his staunch opposition to the mandatory detention of asylum seekers, and has provided legal counsel in a wide array of high-profile cases...

, Geoffrey Robertson QC, Brendan Kilty SC 'Whatever happened to Human Rights?'

2006 Debates. Robert Manne

Robert Manne

vs Andrew Bolt

Andrew Bolt

Andrew Bolt is an Australian newspaper columnist, radio commentator, blogger and television host. Bolt is a columnist and associate editor of the Melbourne-based Herald Sun. He has appeared on the Nine Network, Melbourne Talk Radio, ABC Television, Network Ten and local radio...

, John Hirst Moderator 'Stolen generation or hijacked history?' and Steve Pratt

Steve Pratt

Stephen George "Steve" Pratt is a former Australian military officer, aid worker and Liberal politician in the Australian Capital Territory Legislative Assembly for the electorate of Brindabella.- Early career :...

vs John Martinkus

John Martinkus

John Martinkus is a print and television journalist renowned in his native Australia for his courageous reporting from conflict zones.He began reporting from Indonesian occupied East Timor in 1995 and set up base there permanently in 1998...

, Max Gillies

Max Gillies

Max Gillies AM is an Australian actor.Gillies was a founding member of the experimental theatre company, the Australian Performing Group, which was active throughout the 1970s....

Moderator 'Dealing with the Devil'

External links

37.817798°N 144.968714°W

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History

Past International Guests

Past Local Guests

Keynote Adresses

Last Word

See also

External links