Our top picks for the Melbourne Writers Festival
Here are our top picks for what to see at the Melbourne Writers Festival (MWF) this year!
Belle Place is really looking forward to seeing Emily Nussbaum.
I’m really looking forward to Castaway with Emily Nussbaum. Nussbaum is the television critic for the New Yorker and I can’t remember ever not agreeing with her reviews (most recently, on Orange is the New Black and Veep). She’s particularly sharp at mapping the growth of a series, and contextualising a show within its contemporaries (I still share her brilliant short essay ‘Difficult Women: How Sex and the City lost its good name’ with SATC naysayers). Nussbaum is also very funny, and I’m excited to hear her talk about her five all-time favourite episodes of television.
Helen Garner’s Opening Night Address is sure to be another highlight. Her new work of non-fiction, This House of Grief will be published in September. I love the pairing of Maria Tumarkin and Wayne Macauley for a session titled Limits of Storytelling – they’ll be discussing whether stories really take us closer to the truth of our lives. Willy Vlautin: In Conversation is also on my list.
The authors of two American novels Nina Kenwood loved are coming to the festival.
Of the international guests at this year’s Melbourne Writers Festival, I am most excited to see Emily Nussbaum, Meg Wolitzer and Alissa Nutting.
To echo Belle’s thoughts above, Emily Nussbaum is one of the best television critics working today and her writing is an absolute pleasure to read. Her enthusiasm for certain shows has led me to find unexpected gems I would never normally have watched (such as The Fosters and Switched at Birth) and provided me with fresh perspectives on critically acclaimed shows (see her terrific and controversial pieces on the finales of Breaking Bad and True Detective). I can’t wait to see her in person.
The authors of two American novels I loved last year – The Interestings and Tampa – are both attending MWF. The Interestings was very well received in the USA, but has been rather overlooked here, so I urge everyone to read it immediately and then see the author Meg Wolitzer in person. Tampa is the kind of book you either love or hate (I enjoyed it; everyone else I know despised it, which only makes me more determined to defend it). This bodes well for seeing Alissa Nutting in person – when your book inspires such strong reactions in people, including bookstores actually refusing to stock it, you’re bound to have interesting stories to tell.
Other names and events that jumped out at me from the program include NoViolet Bulawayo and Isobelle Carmody, as well as the Oversharers Anonymous and the Selfie Culture events.
Bronte Coates recommends joining the festival’s #onboardbookclub.
The big names on my wishlist this year include some amazing non-fiction writers – astronaut Chris Hadfield, television critic Emily Nussbaum (yes… again…), Russian journalist Masha Gessen and food writer Ruth Reichl. Regards to the latter, I’d very much love to attend her event, Thinking & Drinking: How to Dine, which features a delicious three course dinner and matched wine.
I also really enjoy attending ‘performative’ events at literary festivals and in this area, am considering one (or all) of the following: The Radio Hour (a spectacular night of non-fiction storytelling), Do You Remember the First Time? (five of Australia’s finest writers for young people share stories of their ‘first time’) or Queer Literary Salon (this was a much-loved event from last year).
Finally… To my thinking, a big part of any literary festival should be dedicating yourself to discovering some new literature and this year, MWF are running a program called, #onboardbookclub. Basically a kind of ‘book club’ for the time-poor, the lazy, the anti-social and more, the festival will use the hashtag to provide weekly reading suggestions from their program.
