Across three days, the 2022 Melbourne Writers Festival offered up discussions, debates and deep dives into the role of art in society, into politics, and into the craft of writing.

Even the most committed of audience members, however, could not have made it to every single event. So, with the weekend behind us, here are some of the big ideas and questions we were left to mull over.

Why are we disgusted when fiction represents things that happen in real life?
In an event centred on her new book, Lapvona, author Ottessa Moshfegh addressed the criticism her work often receives for being unflinching about bodily functions. “Are we still so shocked that a character uses a toilet? It’s such a part of being alive, I like pushing it so the uptight people will be like ‘oh, I’m being uptight’. ” she reflected over video link to appreciative laughter. Her novels don’t shy away from violence or the darker side of human nature either, something she again is often criticised for. It’s a somewhat hypocritical stance she suggests: “The same incredibly horrifying stuff is happening on the daily in real life, but we aren’t discussing how disgusted it makes us.”

Sometimes it’s impossible to leave your beliefs and values at the door
Do commentators need to be apolitical in order to properly explore an issue? In Writing Wrongs, a panel discussion with formerly imprisoned academic Kylie Moore-Gilbert and academic Michelle Aung Thin, journalist and author Louisa Lim recalled a time she went to conduct an interview with pro-democracy protestors in Hong Kong. The group was responsible for producing huge, eight-storey-high protest banners which would be hung on prominent landmarks. When she went to speak to them, however, she found herself compelled to join in. As a journalist, she was concerned about including this scene in her book, Indelible City, but ended up including it, the personal touch ultimately enhancing the research and reportage.

Writers can still inspire their audiences
It’s a rare thing for audiences to get off their feet at the end of a session. Polite applause, yes, but standing ovations? Rarely. The Writing Wrongs event produced a spontaneous eruption of enthusiastic applause from an audience that leaped immediately to its collective feet. The response was similar for former asylum seeker, Abbas Nazari, who spoke about having been rescued by the Tampa after the boat he was on with 437 other people floundered on the ocean. He was one of the lucky ones – one day in offshore detention and then off with 149 other Afghans to the haven of New Zealand, where he flourished. He wants his book, After the Tampa, to be read not by people who agree with him but “by folks that had strong anti-refugee feelings”.

You can’t deny there’s denial
Anita Hill, the woman who memorably and powerfully testified against the nomination in 1991 of Clarence Thomas to the US Supreme Court, spoke about her ongoing campaign against gender violence and sexual harassment. There could not be a solution to the problem until society was willing to confront it, she said. But despite one in four women likely to be sexually assaulted in college and in the home, “people still say that can’t be possible ... even those who have experienced it”. Denial, she said, was a reaction that allowed the problem to perpetuate. The rise of social media facilitated greater sharing of experiences – a significant part of healing – but she wondered what might have happened had social media been so influential when she testified: “In 1991 people shared, but nothing like today – then people sent telegrams to Washington to tell of their experiences”.

Maintain the rage
Coinciding with his country’s advances into territory occupied by the Russian invaders, Ukraine’s ambassador to Australia, Vasyl Myroshnychenko, spelled out the future of the war. The only strategy was to keep fighting, he said, because his country faced an existential crisis, defeat Russia, repel them from the entire Ukraine territory. “Only then can we have any settlement,” he stressed. “We as Ukrainians can accept nothing but victory.” He wants the return of Crimea and the Donbas and their 2.4 million people and the prosecution of those responsible for war crimes. One of the consequences of the invasion was “that what we are seeing is the birth of a true political nation”.