MWF podcast interview: Steve Hely

Do you know what it takes to become a famous novelist? Apparently, you only need a bunch of rules (including ‘Rule 9: At dull points include descriptions of delicious meals’), a  desire to show your ex-girlfriend up at her wedding, and a guest appearance on Law and Order: SVU. Steve Hely’s How I Became a Famous Novelist has been described as ‘an expose of the world of books and writing’ and as ‘bulging with humour, fat with arch parody, obese with deft satire, each page deserving of a dog ear of commemoration’.

MWF blogger Estelle Tang spoke to Steve about comedy, the pain of writing, and how to tell a dud book from a good one.

Listen or Download audio here

Blogger’s picks for MWF 2011

I’ve started circling events in the MWF program. Terrifying and all-encompassing though the red pen carnage may seem, there are some events I know I won’t miss.

Usually my list is fiction-heavy, but thanks to the growing hubbub about digital news and the recent resurgence in interest about the ethics of journalism, New News 2011 has been a focus of my festival planning this year. New News 2011 will bring together media leaders and commentators from all over Australia and the world, including New York University media critic Jay Rosen, chair of the Public Interest Journalism Foundation Margaret Simons, and ABC Managing Director Mark Scott. Rosen’s Big Ideas: Why Political Coverage is Broken promises electrifying analysis of journalism today, and Media Leaders Held to Account offers one intrepid participant the opportunity to share the stage with Mark Scott and Crikey‘s Sophie Black (to be in the running, submit a question at OurSay).

One fiction writer who has raced up my list of to-sees is Steve Hely, whose How I Became a Famous Novelist is a magnificently titter-inducing work of satire. The novel tells the story of a down-and-out college entrance essay writer who cracks the code of the best-selling literary novel (‘Rule 16: Include plant names’). As well as being a novelist, Hely writes for television programs 30 Rock, The Office and American Dad, and it shows in his mortifyingly acute descriptions (‘The only other customer at the coffee bar…was tearing apart a cranberry-raisin muffin with frantic violence. Crumbs were strewn across her open copy of The Jane Austen Women’s Investigators’ Club.’) Not for reading die-hards who cannot laugh at themselves. Hely is appearing in TV Tales, with Wendy Harmer, Tim Ferguson and many more TV writers; The Morning Read, always a lovely way to ease yourself into festival season; The Comedy of Publishing, and Friday Night Live.

Finally, the world has been keeping a close eye on the Middle East this year, with a chain of political upheavals generating debate, concern and hope. As Egyptian commentator and journalist Mona Eltahawy has said, ‘Tunisia allowed us to imagine a future beyond our dictators. And everybody was watching Tunisia.  And then everybody started watching Egypt and then Bahrain and Yemen and Libya and Syria. So, everybody’s paying attention.’  I’m looking forward to Eltahawy’s analysis in Big Ideas: The Roots of the Egyptian Revolution – From Tahrir Square to Liberation From Dictatorship. You can see Eltahawy commenting on the trial of Hosni Mubarak here, and on the Syrian blogger hoax here.

What are your festival picks?