Five facts: John Boyne

John Boyne is one of the main stars in this year’s program, he has appeared in no less than seven festival sessions. He is the author of seven novels including the international bestseller The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas which has sold more than five million copies worldwide. His latest novel is The Terrible Thing That Happened To Barnaby Brocket.

Five facts:

My favourite writers’ festival experience was taking part in an event with the great Morris Gleitzman at the Melbourne Writers Festival in 2009. We had both written books on a similar theme and having known his work for some years it was an honour to share a stage with him.

I’m currently reading The Forrests by Emily Perkins. I’ll be visiting New Zealand in September and am interested in reading some contemporary NZ fiction.

When I was a child I wanted to be a writer or a pop star. Sadly the latter never came true but the fomer worked out ok.

When I’m stuck, or need to take a break from writing, I take my dog for a run in the mountains, let the fresh air clear my head.

The first thing I ever wrote was a new adventure for the Secret Seven.

 

Smells like…

The atrium at Federation Square is quiet. A whirr of a coffee machine off in the distance, and a regular clump clump from Readings bookshop as they set up books for the day. Some muzak, thankfully unidentifiable, is humming through the airwaves. And then. And then a noise in the background, a gentle hum, a louder drone. Getting louder. And then BLAM. In comes the first schools group, 21 13 year olds, followed by more and more groups, led by their harassed teachers shouting in vain to keep them under some semblance of control. The festival’s schools program has started. 10,000 students in 3 days.

They come in waves, getting louder and louder and then shuffling into the sessions for the hour, bouncing off each other,  yelling, bumping into  everything, putting their tickets out to be scanned, and barging into the venues.  

Peace reigns for a while. Then the riffs of noise start up again as they all come out in the same gamboling, uncoordinated, bumping way, eating, drinking, just sucking in life as they go about their day.  Eventually they disperse to make way for the next tsunami of school groups.

I go into the venue.  It’s littered with bits of paper and unidentifiable flotsam.  The whole place smells of hormones – wafting through the space looking for somewhere to implant themselves.

I back out.

It’s exhausting.We all feel we’ve survived some spectacular, some cataclysm.  But it’s fun, energetic, life affirming. 

Later that day, the cleaners at Federation Square email me to say they’ll have to charge extra for after the schools. 

Two more days before we go back to the main program. 

Helenka
Festival Manager

Get Crafty

The last few weeks I seem to have been flittering from art market to craft market like a moth to glowing flame. There’s the Craft Hatch market at City Library each month, where I found my new friend Banana Jeremiah, which, you may have guessed, is a crotched banana on a necklace (it’s so obvious really). I handed out business cards at the Rose St Artist Market, and continue to lament that I can’t attend Craft Cartel‘s monthly meet as the Monday events clash with circus class.

MWF circus snap

For those who were paying attention, yes I have business cards! I feel quite pleased by this. I’m possibly more pleased that I was able to hand out cards to incredible local artists as the Melbourne Writers Festival will be collaborating for the first time this year with Craft Victoria to run Craft Hatch @ MWF, Where Stories Meet Craft, our first ever craft market for text, paper and story based art. Craft Victoria are currently accepting applications from anyone interested in hiring a stall for the market > tell your friends and complete strangers too.

My long weekend will be part Schools Program Giant Mail Out (volunteers ahoy!), part skirt-making co-operative (which means I’ve bought geeky space-printed fabric and my friend will make it into something pretty), part Avenue Q (woo hoo!), and, most importantly, part lounging around on a weekday. Happy Long Weekend to one and all!

Louise
Festival Administrator

One more calendar page

Eeek, we’ve turned another page on the calendar. That means there is only one more page turn until the box office goes on stream, and the website goes live. That’s pretty scarey.  (Where did May go?).

I’m looking forward to the irrepresible Steve Joyce coming on board as box office manager next week. Especially looking forward to handing all the ticketing preparation to him!  The schools program will be on the festival website, by the end of this week, and the schools program box office opens on Tuesday 9 June (for the schools program, not the main program).

Then once the main program is finalised, later this month, it’s full tilt getting the website built, the ticketing built and the box office installed.  We have about a fortnight to do this, so it’s intense.

But all the other things I’m organising are panning out well and I’m feeling slightly optimistic that everything will be done in good time this year.

Just wish those calendar pages would linger a little longer.

Helenka
Festival Manager

Is it Friday already?

Hey Everyone,

I feel like I’m peering out from under my desk, seeing daylight for the first time. (Accompanied by a sense is one of déjà vu, I might add.) After sneaking, tweaking and just a little freaking, we are just one author away from finalising the Schools Program. It’s been a mostly smooth process, but there’s nothing like a hard deadline to bring it all into focus. (And there’s nothing like the inevitable last-minute withdrawal by writers to make it all blurry again.)

All that said, it’s a delight (relief?) that the Schools Program is now off with our lovely designers (at JWT); we’ll go to print in a week or so and then our snazzy program will be catching the attention of English teachers, librarians and readers of all ages at every school across Victoria. We have an incredible line-up of 51 guests in over 70 events … that’s a 50% increase in both guests and events … not that we think bigger is necessarily better … it’s just that better is, well, better. If you stay tuned to the e-bulletin, there’ll be a bit more info released next week.

In other news I went to a certain inner-city locale with Helenka (Festival Manager) and Tom (our new Production Manager) to see if a venue with David Lynch’s theatrical stylings could further enhance the festival atmosphere. Ohh, it can and with any luck it will. (Actually luck doesn’t play too much of a role in this game.) But more on this soon.

Finally, I’ve been reading a number of books, but thought I’d like to chat about a few. I thought that Tony Thompson’s Shakespeare: the most famous man in London is one to look out for if you’ve got a younger friend (aged 10-15) with a literary bent. Tony is a teacher at Princes Hill who’s been teaching Shakespeare for decades. In this book he gives an engaged and energised account of Shakespeare and the world in which he lived. (And, actually, you don’t need a literary bent at all; it’s a good read full stop.)

I’m also just half-way through The Red Highway by Nicolas Rothwell. I absolutely loved his book Another Country and thought his essay in the recent issue of the Monthly was pure poetry. (I’ll be very surprised if you didn’t read it in a 2009 ‘Best Essays’ compilation.) I find there’s a similarity of tone and timbre between Rothwell’s work and that of Robert Dessaix, but Rothwell’s is so deeply rooted in the Australian outback (and, more precisely, the north) and I love his almost spiritual connection to the land. If you haven’t read Rothwell’s work, try the essay first, and if you like the language and spirit of that you’ll have a fair idea of the way he writes. Also, you can also check him out at last year’s MWF discussing ‘the essay’ with Gideon Haigh, Chloe Hooper and Sally Warhaft.

I must get going. Nice to chat.

Cheers,

Steve
Associate Director