Subscribe to the MWF eNewsletter for your chance to win a bundle of six books! (Just in time for holiday reading.) Your bundle will include: – Gunflower, Laura Jean McKay – Plants: Past, Present and Future, Zena Cumpston, Michael-Shawn Fletcher and Lesley Head – Everyone on this Train is a Suspect, Benjamin […]
A world-renowned expert in American literature and culture, Sarah Churchwell (The Wrath to Come: Gone with the Wind and the Lies America Tells) delivers the 2023 John Button Oration. Examining one of the most popular stories of all time, Gone with the Wind, Churchwell shows how histories of mythmaking have informed America’s racial and gender […]
Sri Lankan author Shehan Karunatilaka won the 2022 Booker Prize for his dazzling magic-realist satire The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida. Set during his homeland’s long civil war, the story follows its title character, a self-described photographer, gambler and ‘closet queen’, who wakes up as a ghost with a week to discover who killed him. […]
Vivia Hickman has resigned as CEO of Melbourne Writers Festival after two spectacular years in the role. “The Melbourne Writers Festival is the jewel in the crown of Melbourne’s literary landscape and it has been an enormous privilege to have the opportunity to contribute to its transformation as it emerged from the very difficult pandemic […]
Which stories made you ‘different’? What makes writing queer? And what books brought about a break up with the gender binary? Join a stellar group of queer writers as they share heartfelt (and hilarious) insights into the stories that shaped how they think and write about sexuality and gender, from J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings to Adrienne Rich’s The Dream […]
“If we don’t learn to relate to each other, we’ll continue to destroy the earth.” – Bruce Pascoe For millennia, reciprocal relationships with plants have provided both sustenance to First Nations communities and many of the materials needed to produce a complex array of technologies. In this wide-ranging discussion, learn more about this fascinating […]
The 2023 Boisbouvier Conversation What is literature for? The Writers on Writers series has become an indispensable fixture in the literary calendar, with leading authors penning their reflections on Australian writers who have inspired and influenced them. One of the most loved and talked about sessions of the 2023 festival, enjoy this discussion about what […]
This year, Melbourne Writers Festival embarked on an exciting new partnership with Geelong Grammar School (GGS). As part of the partnership, acclaimed writer Nina Wan (The Albatross) attended GGS’s Corio Campus in May to speak directly to students about forging a career as a writer and to introduce the theme for the school’s annual literary […]
Enjoy listening to two of 2023’s most talked about novelists – and possibly the only two people to have ever become friends over Zoom – Emma Straub (This Time Tomorrow) and Gabrielle Zevin (Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow). With Brodie Lancaster, they discuss their approaches to crafting fiction, writing a different kind of love story […]
Hear from New York Times–bestselling author and millennial food icon Alison Roman as she joins Benjamin Law to discuss her career, recipes and latest cookbook, Sweet Enough. Roman shares her journey from working as a chef in professional kitchens and becoming a much-discussed food writer at Bon Appétit and The New York Times to eventually freeing her […]
I wanted to make a point to readers that we are just like everyone else. Which is to say, we are just as complicated as anyone else…And if you realise we are just like you, whoever you are, then how can you justify treating us differently? – Tracey Lien Authors Tracey Lien (All That’s […]
Casting fresh light on Australia’s colonial past, the latest novels by award-winning journalist Paul Daley (Jesustown) and acclaimed author Fiona McFarlane (The Sun Walks Down) tell stories that upend the usual depictions in history books. Listen in as they speak to bestselling author and First Nations Curator Tony Birch about their approach to writing narratives […]