Blog Archives
Blogs about the 2009 Melbourne Writers Festival
It has been wonderful to see the flurry of online activity that this year’s festival has generated on this blog, on Facebook and on Twitter. However, there has also been an extraordinary amount of blogging done elsewhere by both MWF guests and visitors.
Here is a list of all the bloggers we could find who wrote about MWF during the festival. The writing collected here is diverse and ranges from event reviews, interviews, personal reflections, festival wrap-ups and humorous takes on the festival. There’s a lot of content here but we certainly had a great time pouring over it all (and noting the feedback!) so we’re sure you’ll enjoy it too.
Finally, we did our best to make contact with everybody who blogged about MWF this year but if we did miss you then apologies and please feel free to submit links to your blog in the comments.
Blogging from within:
Official MWF bloggers Estelle Tang and Frenchelbow (Simon Keck) here at mwfblog.com.au
Philip Hensher, whose novel The Northern Clemency was shortlisted for the 2008 Man Booker Prize, wrote about his visit to Melbourne for MWF here for the UK newspaper The Independent.
Zimbabwean writer Petina Gappah wrote this post on her personal blog about her visit to Melbourne as a MWF guest.
Festival guest Angela Meyer is the author of the LiteraryMinded blog and she kept an incredibly comprehensive online diary during the festival:
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8
Festival guests Jessica Au and Sophie Cunningham from Meanjin Quarterly wrote this piece about The Future of the Book session on Spike (Meanjin‘s blog).
Young adult and children’s fiction writer Julia Lawrinson blogs here on her Writing in the margins blog.
Artist Chay-Ya Clancy created the Federation Square word board installation, which so many of you had fun with. Chay-Ya did some behind the scenes blogging on her Stillness in flight blog.
MWF Copywriting intern Megan Burke covered MWF extensively throughout these posts on her Literary Life blog.
MWF related content from Readings, the festival’s official bookseller.
Blogging from without:
Freelance writer George Dunford covered the festival on his blog Hackpacker in the posts collected here.
On ANZ LitLovers LitBlog, the blog for the online reading group, Lisa Hill covered the festival on the posts collected here.
Perry Middlemiss, who has written online about Australian literature since 1996, filed these four reports on his Matilda blog.
Ghostlines author Nick Gadd wrote about MWF in these three pieces from his blog The writer in disguise.
Joyce Kwok, the author of the decisive guide to Melbourne Mel: Hot or Not, covered MWF in these posts.
Benjamin Solah, Marxist Horror Writer, covered MWF on these posts and a summary of those posts appears at The Specusphere.
Writer, reader and teacher Sherryl Clark filed these four reports on her Books and Writing blog.
Thuy Linh Nguyen wrote about MWF across these posts.
Kathryn Daley covered MWF in these posts on her A little bit of life blog.
Also check out:
Author Jon Bauer’s festival wrap-up
Planning With Kids on the Schools Program
Miscellaneous Adventures of an Aussie Mum on the MJ Hyland masterclass
Emancipation of Eve on Marketing in the Info Age
eleventyone on Digital Publishing and McSweeney’s (Futuristic) Antipodean Adventure!
Words in progress on Award Winning Australian Fiction launch and Liner Notes: Michael Jackson’s Thriller
Ambrosia : A Memoir on Krissy Kneen (interview)
Just for fun
The satirical news blog The Late Breaker did a series of literary theme posts to celebrate MWF and they can be found here.
Idiot’s View on Writers Festivals
Hensher, Shamsie, Naparstek
Philip Hensher
It’s a potent combination, even if you discount the Liner Notes-induced head fuzz. Philip Hensher and Kamila Shamsie sat down this morning with Ben Naparstek to ‘have a little chat to each other’ about history as a basis for fiction writing.
For Shamsie, there are two types of people — those who have the ‘luxury of believing that their lives are separate from history’ and those who know that this isn’t the case. Discovering history is a way of building character — she had created a minor character, a Japanese woman, and became interested in searching for the ‘truth about women in Japan’, not the ‘idea of the demure Japanese woman’. But you’ll have to write a while for her ‘Pakistani science-fiction novel’. Sometimes historical fact gets in the way of beautiful fiction: Shamsie once wrote a scene featuring riotous beds of azaleas, but she discovered that at the time the scene was set, Nagasaki was going through a food shortage and in reality all the flowerbeds had been pulled out and replaced with vegetables.
Philip Hensher suggested, rather wickedly, that ‘people use “history” to refer to any event of significance’. He then riffed about
Kamila Shamsie
some of his own rather dubious encounters with ‘history’, such as the time he saw the Queen on the street: ‘I love the Queen, I think she’s marvellous’. Hensher thinks that most historical fiction focuses on the situation’s ‘innocent bystander’: ‘If you look at most great novels about historical events, they’re not about the main actors in those events.’ Great figures are difficult to get into a novel because the reader already knows too much about them. But Hensher also has some special plans for the Prime Minister: ‘I would love to write a book about Gordon Brown in retirement.’
Estelle Tang, 3000 BOOKS
Festival Blogger
All Our Workshops are Now ON SALE!
Bookings are open for the Melbourne Writers Festival Workshop Program. The Festival celebrates the fact that we’re a city of readers and writers, by offering audiences a fantastic range of workshops, masterclasses and seminars with our visiting authors. When bringing writers from around the world (and around Australia), it seems unwise not to utilise their knowledge and thus our program of Workshops & Seminars has been developed to develop our local talents.
Workshops are for all-comers, no matter what their level of experience, while masterclasses are for those with some record of publishing success. More details will be found on the MWF website. Masterclasses and workshops are limited to just 14 participants so those classes tend to book out very quickly.
This year’s workshops include:
Tom Rob Smith (UK) on Commerce & Creativity
Lisa Lutz (US) on Giving Voice to Unique Characters
Kate De Goldi (NZ) on Writing Fiction for Children
Wells Tower (Canada) on Writing Short Stories
Jessa Crispin (US) on Being a Critic During the Death of Print
Wayson Choy (Canada) on The Secrets of Memoir Writing – Truth or Consequences?
Our masterclasses include:
John Boyne (UK) on Historical Fiction
M J Hyland (UK) on How to Write Good Fiction – From First Draft to Last
Philip Hensher (UK) on Building Character
Our seminars include:
Aspects of the Novel, with Philip Hensher (UK) & Wayson Choy (Canada)
Aspects of Fantasy with Margo Lanagan (NSW)
Aspects of History with Glen David Gold (US) & Alexander Waugh (UK)
Aspects of Thrillers & Mysteries with Jewell Rhodes (US) and Tom Rob Smith (UK)
Finally, to give an insight into the world of publishing, the festival runs The Whole Shebang, our intensive day-long workshop for emerging writers. This is a very popular day and features conversations on the author–editor relationship, grant writing, ways to get published and how to create you own success, in addition to presentations from all the key organisations. This day is an essential starting point for all those wanting to begin their writing career.
Details and bookings for the 2009 MWF Professional Development Sessions.
2009 MWF Professional Development
The Melbourne Writers Festival celebrates the fact that we’re a city of readers and writers, by offering audiences a fantastic range of workshops and seminars with our visiting guests. When bringing writers from around the world (and around Australia), it seems unwise not to utilise their knowledge and thus our program of Workshops & Seminars has been developed to develop our local talents.
In 2009 the MWF is continuing to run both workshops and masterclasses, a seminar series and The Whole Shebang – our very popular day for those seeking to begin their writing career.
Workshops are for all-comers, no matter what their level of experience, while masterclasses are for those with some record of publishing success.
More details will be found on our website when the program is launched.
This year’s workshops include:
Tom Rob Smith (US) on Commerce & Creativity
Lisa Lutz (US) on Giving Voice to Unique Characters
Kate de Goldi (NZ) on Writing Fiction for Children
Wells Tower (Canada) on Writing Short Stories
Jessa Crispin (US) on Being a Critic During the Death of Print
Wayson Choy (Canada) on The Secrets of Memoir Writing – Truth or Consequences?
Our masterclasses include:
John Boyne (UK) on Historical Fiction
M J Hyland (UK) on How to Write Good Fiction – From First Draft to Last
Philip Hensher (UK) on Building Character
Our seminars include:
Aspects of the Novel, with Philip Hensher (UK) & Wayson Choy (Canada)
Aspects of Fantasy with Margo Lanagan (NSW)
Aspects of History with Glen David Gold (US) & Alexander Waugh (UK)
Aspects of Thrillers & Mysteries with Jewell Rhodes (US) and Tom Rob Smith (US)
Finally, to give an insight into the world of publishing, the festival runs The Whole Shebang, our intensive day-long workshop for emerging writers. This is a very popular day and features conversations on the author–editor relationship, grant writing, ways to get published and how to create you own success, in addition to presentations from all the key organisations. This day is an essential starting point for all those wanting to begin their writing career.
Steve
Associate Director
On the go?
Hi again,
I’ll try and make sense, even though I’m sharing a ’12 things on the go’ moment with (pretty much) all my colleagues. The festival is hotting up – authors, events and ideas about the ways these two intersect are moving around us at an ungainly speed. It’s fun, but it’s all becoming a little bit of a blur (in a fun way though, pretty much like doing ‘wizzies’ when you were a kid).
Every time my eyes refocus I turn them to a new book. I’ve just started Philip Hensher’s The Northern Clemency, a Booker nominee and, at this early stage of my reading I can understand why; the language is beautiful, loaded and large, but still light and erudite (if that’s all possible). I’m only 100 pages in and I’ve met almost 20 characters … an ‘epic portrait’ indeed. I already feel like I’d be at home in any of the local pubs (in one of the corners of 1970s Sheffield).
Prior to this I’ve read Ryu Murakami’s Audition, a short book about a middle-aged man who chances upon the most unique way of finding a second wife … by creating a fake film project which a range of women audition for. I was, after much of what I’ve read about this book, expecting something far more violent. This wasn’t really the case. There is a sense of unease that’s sustained through much of the latter part of the book and it only gets a little gruesome at the end. I look forward to seeing the film version (although I’m a little concerned about the affect on me, seeing the ‘Critical response‘ section of the Wiki page).
I also read Steven Amsterdam’s Things We Didn’t See Coming (Sleepers Publishing). I’m not going to be able to do this book justice in this short blog, but I really enjoyed it. I wasn’t expecting spec-fiction and also got something that reminded me of David Mitchell, whose Cloud Atlas I loved. Amsterdam’s book follows one main character through a series of episodes in a post-Y2K world … a world that’s gone totally awry, and a world that could very possibly be ours in the too-soon future (Y2K aside). It’s believable, and there’s room in the spaces to let the reader bring their own thoughts to the table.
I’d better go now, given I’m still in the middle of a ’11 things on the go’ moment.
Regards
Steve
Associate Director
Melbourne Writers Festival blog 