20 international guests at Melbourne Writers Festival 2016
Here are 20 international guests appearing at this year’s Melbourne Writers Fesitval (MWF). You can find even more guests in the full Festival program here.
We’re also so pleased to be hosting a series of conversations showcasing new Australian fiction, and you can find out what our staff are most excited to see right here.
PJ Harvey
PJ Harvey is an English singer-songwriter, composer and poet. She has released nine critically acclaimed albums, been nominated for six Grammy Awards, and is the only artist to have been awarded the UK’s prestigious Mercury Prize twice. Harvey’s first collection of poetry, The Hollow of the Hand, in collaboration with photographer Seamus Murphy, was published in 2015.
Book tickets to see PJ Harvey here
Justin Cronin
Justin Cronin is the author of The Passage series, including this year’s thrilling conclusion: The City of Mirrors. Honours for his writing include the PEN/Hemingway Award, the Stephen Crane Prize, a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and a Whiting Writer’s Award.
Book tickets to see Justin Cronin here
Lev Grossman
Lev Grossman is the author of The Magicians trilogy. These books are published in 25 countries and have earned praise from George RR Martin, Audrey Niffenegger, John Green, Junot Díaz , Erin Morgenstern and William Gibson. A TV drama based on the trilogy is currently filming its second season. Grossman is also Time magazine’s book critic and lead technology writer.
Book tickets to see Lev Grossman here
Juliet Jacques
Juliet Jacques is the author of Trans, published by Verso Books in 2015. The book was based on her Guardian series, A Transgender Journey (2010-12), which was the first time the gender reassignment process had been serialised in a major British newspaper. She was included in the Independent on Sunday’s Rainbow List of influential LGBT people from 2012 to 2015, and spoke at the PEN International Congress in Kyrgyzstan in 2014.
Book tickets to see Juliet Jacques here
Angela Flournoy
Angela Flournoy is the author of The Turner House, which was shortlisted for the National Book Award 2015. She is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and the University of Southern California. She has taught writing at the University of Iowa and Trinity Washington University, and has worked for the DC Public Library.
Book tickets to see Angela Flournoy here
Alexei Sayle
Alexei Sayle is a stand-up comedian, actor and writer. Born in Liverpool, the only child of communist parents, he moved to London in 1971 to attend Chelsea Art School. He became the first MC of the Comedy Store and later the Comic Strip. He had recently released the second volume of his hilarious memoirs: Thatcher Stole My Trousers.
Book tickets to see Alexei Sayle here
Molly Crabapple
Molly Crabapple is an artist, journalist and author of the memoir Drawing Blood. She has drawn in and reported from Guantanamo Bay, Abu Dhabi’s migrant labour camps, and in Syria, Lebanon, Gaza, the West Bank and Iraqi Kurdistan. Crabapple is a contributing editor for VICE, and has written for publications including The New York Times, Paris Review and Vanity Fair. Her work is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art.
Book tickets to see Molly Crabapple here
Yann Martel
Yann Martel is the author of Life of Pi, which was named the winner of the 2002 Man Booker Prize, and later adapted to the screen in an Oscar-winning film by Ang Lee. Born in Spain, Martel studied philosophy at Trent University, worked odd jobs – tree planter, dishwasher, security guard – and travelled widely before turning to writing. He now lives in Saskatoon with the writer Alice Kuipers and their four children. The High Mountains of Portugal is his latest book.
Book tickets to see Yann Martel here
Eimear McBride
Eimear McBride’s first novel, A Girl is a Half-formed Thing, won the 2014 Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction and the 2013 Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize. McBride was born in Liverpool before moving to Ireland when she was three. She then moved to London aged 17 to study at The Drama Centre. Her most recent book is The Lesser Bohemians.
Book tickets to see Eimear McBride here
Geoff Dyer
Geoff Dyer is the award-winning author of multiple novels and non-fiction books. In 2015 he won a Windham Campbell Award for Nonfiction and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He also won a National Book Critics Circle Award in 2011, and in 2009 was named GQ‘s Writer of the Year.
Book tickets to see Geoff Dyer here
Sheila Watt-Cloutier
Sheila Watt-Cloutier is a widely acclaimed environmental and human rights activist. She is of Inuit heritage, having lived in a traditional hunting culture, travelling only by dog team the first 10 years of her life. In 2007, she was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for her advocacy work in showing the impact of climate change on human rights of the Inuit.
Book tickets to see Sheila Watt-Cloutier here
Lionel Shriver
Lionel Shriver is an American journalist and writer. She is the author of several novels including the widely-acclaimed We Need to Talk About Kevin, and, most recently, The Mandibles. She writes frequently for The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian and The Independent. Shriver lives in London and Brooklyn, New York.
Book tickets to see Lionel Shriver here
Michael Marmot
Sir Michael Marmot is Professor of Epidemiology at University College London and president of the World Medical Association. He holds the Harvard Lown Professorship for 2014 to 2017, and is the recipient of the Prince Mahidol Award for Public Health 2015. He has been awarded honorary doctorates from 16 universities and has led research groups on health inequalities for 40 years. In 2000, je was knighted by Her Majesty the Queen, for services to epidemiology and the understanding of health inequalities.
Book tickets to see Michael Marmot here
Anjum Hasan
Anjum Hasan’s books have been nominated for various awards including the Man Asian Literary Prize, the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature, the Hindu Best Fiction Award and the Crossword Fiction Award. Hasan is also books editor at The Caravan, India’s leading magazine of longform reporting and essays. Her most recent novel is The Cosmopolitans.
Book tickets to see Anjum Hasan here
Rainbow Rowell
Rainbow Rowell writes books. Sometimes she writes about adults. Sometimes she writes about teenagers. But she always writes about people who talk a lot. And people who feel like they’re screwing up. And people who fall in love. She lives in Nebraska with her husband and sons.
Book tickets to see Rainbow Rowell here
AC Grayling
AC Grayling is the Master of the New College of the Humanities, London, and its Professor of Philosophy. He has written more than 30 books and essays on philosophy, biography and the history of ideas, and his latest work is The Age of Genius.
Book tickets to see AC Grayling here
Nadia Hashimi
Nadia Hashimi writes stories about the lives of Afghani women and their families, and her most recent novel is A House Without Windows. Hashimi’s parents left Afghanistan in the 1970s before the Soviet invasion and she visited Afghanistan for the first time in 2002. She now lives with her family in suburban Washington, DC, where she works as a paediatrician.
Book tickets to see Nadia Hashimi here
Steve Hely
Steve Hely is the author of The Wonder Trail. He was a writer for 30 Rock, Late Show with David Letterman, The Office and the acclaimed animated comedy American Dad!. He also wrote the Thurber-winning novel How I Became a Famous Novelist, and is co-author of the comic travelogue The Ridiculous Race.
Book tickets to see Steve Hely here
Tracy K Smith
Tracy K Smith is the author of the critically acclaimed memoir Ordinary Light and three books of poetry. Smith was the recipient of a Rona Jaffe Writers Award in 2004 and a Whiting Award in 2005. In 2014, Smith received the Academy Fellowship, and she is currently the director of Princeton University’s Creative Writing Program.
Book tickets to see Tracy K Smith here
Tim Parks
Tim Parks is a novelist, essayist, travel writer and translator based in Italy. He is the author of 15 novels, and has also translated works by Moravia, Calvino, Calasso, Machiavelli and Leopardi. While running a postgraduate degree course in translation in Milan, he writes regularly for the London Review of Books and the New York Review of Books.
Book tickets to see Tim Parks here
