Results tagged “Melbourne Writers' Festival”

I've fallen behind in these Melbourne Writers Festival reports - put it down to business, work, attending the Ned Kelly Awards, weekend stuff and, well, life.  But the festival is now over and if I don't get to these reports soon they'll be so far out-of-date as to be nearly less than useful.

On Thursday last week Sheryl Clark was looking forward to attending sessions on the Friday and the weekend.  That's what I call dedication.

Angela Meyer tries something a bit different for a festival report.

Justine Larbalestier finds that she's being asked all the wrong questions by aspiring writers, but has come up with a good question in return.  

Sherryl Gwyther went along to hear Professor Alan Fels discuss the topic of parallel importation of books and quickly came to relaise that he was looking at the whole thing from a free-marketer's perspective.  

Dee White also attended the Parallel Importation panel and was a bit amazed no authors were invited to take part in the formal section.  Morris Gleitzman did ask a question from the floor.

Evie Wyld is writing for the Random House blog about the festival and confesses that she's never bene to Melbourne before.  Tsk tsk.

Bronwyn Parry dropped in to the Davitt Awards on Friday night and attended a few items at the festival but seems to have been on the publicity road for a while.

Andrew of the "Librarian Idol" weblog spent his time at the YA and childrens section of the program and writes about what he found there.

Estelle catches up with Jessa Crispin on the Melbourne Writers Festival blog.

The "Australian Dark Fiction" weblog has listed all the sessions with a possible interest for Australian Horror Writers Association.  There are a lot of them.

The "Jabberwocky" weblog reports on Bernard Schlink's opening address from last Friday. As did Kathryn Daley, who also went along to see Raimond Gaita, Alice Pung, Steven Carroll and Antoni Jach, and David Kilcullen with Julian Burnside.  "The Nuke Strategy Wonk" weblog was there as well for the Kilcullen/Burnside session.

"Rough Review" weblog was interested in YA writers Kate de Goldi and Archie Fusillo.

Rather than sitting in the audience, Anthony Eaton sat on a panel with Margo Lanagan and seems to have had a good time.

Angela Slater made a flying visit to the festival for the weekend, saw lots of good stuff and caught up with some old friends.

The "Readings" weblog reports on a number of ex-RMIT writing students who are appearing at MWF, and also lists the bestselling books at the festival.

"The Age" newspaper's Jason Steger reported on panels looking at "the question of the relationship between fiction and history and the dynamics therein."  And Francis Atkinson from the same paper went along to hear Scott Westerfeld and China Mieville discuss their work, YA and science fiction.

The Melbourne Writers' Festival has been running for three days now and the blog reports are coming in thick and fast.  Much more so than last year I think.

Lisa Hill, of the "ANZ LitLovers LitBlog" started her festival on Saturday wandering along to see the Andrea Goldsmith interview, and then Kate Grenville and Ann Michaels.  Lisa also rounds out her reports by commenting on the venue and giving details of what she bought at the book stalls.  This is an engaging technique which gets the reader involved in Lisa's day - even down to the rissotto at Young and Jackson's. 

Lisa backed up on Sunday with a full non-fiction day: Margaret Simons and Jeff Sparrow on the media, Les Carlyon and Antony Beevor on history as narrative, and then Biography and Autobiography, which seems to have had a rather male-dominated panel.

"Speakeasy", the Australian Writers' Marketplace blog, went along to hear Penguin publisher Robert Sessions speak for an hour, and wished it had been two.

Stephanie Campisi  found herself feeling like a dullard for asking "an extremely circumspect (although not intentionally) question" to China Mieville, who responded politely.  Stephanie saw him again at the post-session signing and seemed to straighten it out.

Kelly Gardiner asks the right questions - why do they let people ask long, boring questions in author sessions?

Angela Meyer has been, seemingly, running flat-out since the first party, the Grenville and Michaels session, Mieville and Lanagan, and the Sparrow and Simons session.  Don't worry that you're getting multiple viewpoints on the same festival sessions.  That's part of the fun and interest.  Everyone looks at things slightly differently.

Jo Case from Readings attended the Ian Buruma alternate keynote address and came away with "the impression that he's one of the most sensible speakers I've heard in a long while."  Buruma's speech was featured on this morning's ABC radio "Book Show".

And, of course, we can't go past the reports by Estelle and Frenchelbow on the Melbourne Writers' Festival weblog.

I know it's hard, but do try to keep up.

The 2009 Melbourne Writers' Festival will be held from August 21 to 30 and the full program was released today as a lift-out in the print version of "The Age" newspaper and as an internet version on the festival's website.

The opening keynote address will be delivered by Bernard Schlink at the Melbourne Town Hall on Friday 21st.  The address will be preceded by the announcement of the winners of "The Age" Book of the Year Awards.

Interesting point first up (with more to follow): Jessa Crispin (founder of the Blog of a Bookslut weblog) is running a workshop titled: "Being a Critic During the Death of Print".  Mark Sarvas, who runs The Elegant Variation weblog, was here last year but that was on the back of the publication of his first novel.  Is Crispin's appearance the first sign that mainstream literary festivals are taking note of literary weblogs?

The 2008 Melbourne Writers' Festival is now finished and the second round of reports have been appearing.

Hackpacker laments the way bloggers were put down at the Festival. This goes the the very nature of thesetype of Festivals. The problem with charging a ticket price for each session means that the general audience wants to see "names" on the panel items. And, to be frank, so would I at $17 or so a pop. But the consequence of this is that you get a general consistency of message. Where are the articulate amateurs? Nowhere to be seen I suspect.

Angela Meyer kept bumping into authors at the Festival - which is hardly surprising - only to have them seemingly avoid her.

More Readings' photos.

Estelle, from "3000 Books", worked on a number of sessions but was still able to give her "best-of", etc, lists.

Sue Burszytynski concluded that YA and genre writers didn't get a lot of exposure.

And, finally, Readings gives the list of the bestselling books of the Festival.

As the Melbourne Writers' Festival moves though its first week a number of bloggers have been writing up their experiences. Judith Ridge, of "The ::New:: Misrule" weblog dropped into three schools' sessions.

Jo Case, on the Readings bookshop weblog went along to see Louise Asher in conversation with Susan Johnson.

And further to the Readings coverage of the MWF are these photos from the first weekend.

Karen Chisholm, of the "Australian Crime Fiction" weblog has a few friends staying with her for the Festival. Which has probably made it difficult for her to post about anything. I suspect she'll be at the Ned Kelly Awards tonight so we might see something out of that.

Margo Lanagan has been and gone, appearing on a few panels earlier in the week; one at least that Judith Ridge went to.

Estelle, from "3000 Books" had a busy first Sunday.

"Hackpacker" went along to see David Sedaris, and Angela was interested in Augusten Burroughs.

The "Speakeasy" weblog mentioned the launch of a new edition of The Australian Writers Marketplace at the Festival.

And Mark Lawrence wonders why the MWF doesn't have "official" lit-bloggers covering the events as other Australian festivals have done.

Some dates of interest relating to the 2008 Melbourne Writers' Festival:

July 16, Wednesday 12:30 - 1:30pm A special preview of the program will be held. BMW Edge, Federation Square Corner of Flinders and Swanston Streets, Melbourne

July 16, Friday Release of the festival program.
August 22, Friday to August 31, Sunday The festival itself.

You can get further details from the Festival's website.

Karen, on the "Australian, New Zealand Crime Fiction" blog, is posting about her adventures at the 2007 Melbourne Writers' Festival.

The full program for the 2007 Melbourne Writers' Festival is now available. The festival will run from August 24th to September 2nd this year. Clive James will deliver the keynote address, "Our Inextinguishable Fortune", at the Melbourne Town Hall on Friday 24th August.

It seems a little early to be mentioning the 2007 Age Melbourne Writers' Festival but you
need to be aware that they have a new web-based newsletter in place, which repalces their previous email version. The latest edition, for November 2006, states that the dates of the 2007 festival have now been set. They are: 24th August to 2nd September.

The program for the 2006 Melbourne Writers' festival will be released tomorrow. The full publication will appear as a supplement in "The Age" newspaper. It won't be mailed out this year. Though I suspect the final listing will appear some time soon on the festival's website. Keep an eye out. In the meantime, it has been announced that two of the major items on the program will be a keynote address by Tim Flannery, moderated by Robyn Williams of the ABC's Science Show, and a panel discussion between Robert Manne and Andrew Bolt on the subject of "Stolen Generations". Now that should be something to see.

The program for the 2006 Melbourne Writers' Festival isn't out yet but the organisers have realised a few titbits via their mailing list. It appears that crime will be big this year - crime and thriller writing that is. Booked to appear so far we have Peter Temple, Shane Maloney, Kerry Greenwood, Jane Clifton, James Phelan, Jack Heath, Barry Maitland, Dame Stella Rimington, Jason Starr, Robert Goddard and Robert Wilson. The Festival runs from August 25th to September 3rd and the program will be released in late July.

The program for the 2005 Melbourne Writers' Festival is now available. The festival runs from August 19th to 28th, 2005 and is the twentieth year that it has been held. Featured speakers include: John Ralston Saul giving the opening address, Douglas Coupland, Karen Joy Fowler, Robert Drewe, Robert Manne, Alexander McCall Smith, Sonya Hartnett and Peter Temple, amongst many others. The opening night will also feature the announcement of the 32nd Age Book of the Year Awards. "The Age", as might be expected, gave some coverage to the festival over the weekend.

The 2005 Melbourne Writers' Festival will be held from August 19th to 28th. Full details are some weeks off yet but a preliminary list of attending writers has been released. Featured authors include, from overseas: Alexander McCall-Smith, Douglas Coupland, John Harvey, Elizabeth Knox, and Karen Joy Fowler. And locally: Kate Grenville, Sonya Hartnett, Jane Clifton, Delia Falconer, Robert Manne, Robert Drewe, Tony Wilson and Sean Condon.