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Lauren Groff and Charlotte Wood: Silence is Golden
The Capitol, May 11, 12pm
How do you go about creating fiction that demands your characters to be isolated, silent or at the very least contemplative? Bestselling American author of Fates and Furies and The Vaster Wilds, Lauren Groff, and prize-winning Australian writer Charlotte Wood (Stone Yard Devotional) share their creative methods and conjuring of character.
Alexis Wright will be in conversation about her Stella Prize-winning novel, Praiseworthy.Credit: Simon Schluter
The Stella Prize: Meet the Winner
State Library Theatrette, May 11, 4.30pm
All praise to Alexis Wright, a very worthy winner of this year’s Stella for writing by Australian women and non-binary writers. Praiseworthy is an epic about climate change, Indigenous life, feral donkeys, butterflies and family and a pestilential haze lurking threateningly above the eponymous town. It’s also very funny.
Toshikazu Kawaguchi: Before the Coffee Gets Cold
Athenaeum Theatre, May 12, Noon
Toshikazu Kawaguchi first wrote what turned into his bestselling novel as a play. The idea is customers at a cafe called Funiculi Funicula can go back in time but have to return … well, the title spells it out. There’s a fifth book in the hugely popular series due out in English later this year, and a TV adaptation in the works. Kawaguchi discusses his work with Daniel Hahn.
A.C. Grayling: Who Owns the Moon?
Conversation Quarter, State Library Victoria, May 12, 1.30pm
It’s a good question, but who will decide and how can any decision be enforced? The British philosopher poses the question in his latest book and argues that our current conventions governing interplanetary property are woefully inadequate and worries about what he sees as an inevitable cosmic land grab.
Paul Lynch celebrates his novel Prophet Song winning the Booker Prize.Credit: Kate Green/Getty Images
Leslie Jamison: Splinters
Conversation Quarter, State Library Victoria, May 12, 3pm
The American novelist, essayist and now memoirist reveals how she wrote Splinters: Another Kind of Love Story, which chronicles her divorce, being a mother to her daughter, and entering a new relationship. She told Vanity Fair she had to double down on her belief that an experience doesn’t have to be extraordinary to be illuminating.
An Afternoon with Andrew O’Hagan
Athenaeum Theatre, May 12, 4.30pm
The Scottish writer tells plenty of good stories – in novels such as Mayflies and his latest, Caledonian Road – and in his long-form journalism in The London Review of Books. He’ll be revealing the scandals, the characters and the corruption, real and imagined, in this conversation with The Monthly editor Michael Williams.
Paul Lynch: Prophet Song
Athenaeum Theatre, May 20, 6.30pm
But wait, if all that’s not enough for you, there’s more – albeit a week after MWF officially ends. Last year’s Booker Prize winner, Irish novelist Paul Lynch, gives the lowdown on his dystopic novel, Prophet Song, his vision of Ireland under the boot of totalitarianism and one woman’s attempts to keep her family alive.
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Plenty of the festival sessions are already sold out, but it’s worth checking the festival website mwf.com.au for new ticket releases.
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