Melbourne Writers Festival 2013

Overview

The Melbourne Writers Festival starts Thursday, 22 August, and takes over the city until September 1. This year it's layer upon layer of awesome.

There is something special about a program headlined by both London Mayor Boris Johnson and 17-year-old icon Tavi Gevinson. This is a festival with both the London Review of Books and The Lifted Brow. The latter of which is going to crowdfund and make from scratch an entire magazine over the festival's 10 days.

2013 is the first year Lisa Dempster has directed MWF, and the former Emerging Writers Festival director/CEO has a knack for knowing which things will make Melbourne writers lose their shit. One of these things is the festival’s opening night, which brings New York-based storytelling event and podcast The Moth to Melbourne for the first time. Live on stage Magda Szubanski, Tony Wheeler and Melissa Lucashenko will all tell true stories about courage. For more evidence of awesomeness see: Tao Lin, Tavi Gevinson (I know I already mentioned her, but hey, it's Tavi!) and Moleskine notebooks.

MWF often combines writing with the city itself, which is where the abundance of walking tours are thrown into the mix. Writers make for excellent guides. There are walks for street art, for using Melbourne as a muse, and one that explores the hidden dragons of Melbourne's public spaces. There are some great free bits too, so if you want to bulk out a whole day at the festival it’s really easy and possible to do on a budget. You can start the day with The Morning Read, visit the daily illustrator in residence in the Atrium of Fed Square, or go to one of the other free events listed here.

This year’s MWF also looks at the way literature is evolving online. Writers have pushed through the era where panels are called ‘Is this the end?’ and ‘Is the internet changing things?’ and ‘WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO GUYZ’ and are finally in an awesome place where they can take a calm, deep breath and celebrate the amazing stuff that happens when writing and the internet meet. The Digital Futures program includes Teju Cole, whose twitter-based project Small Fates has attracted over 90,000 followers; a discussion on the impact of online music criticism; and Digital Drive — a whole day for writers to learn about developing digital work.

With such a huge array of events on offer, there are also some bite-sized festivals within MWF that might make your 10 days easier to program. One is the always-excellent New News conference — two days with incredible news reporting and editing talent including Katharine Viner, Michael Gawenda and Sophie Black. There's also the World Writers’ Conference which brings Scottish writers to Melbourne via Edinburgh.

And that thing you’re obsessed with? There’s probably a panel on writing about that too. Antarctica? Spies? Bees?

You should snap up tickets to the things you want to go to now, because the festival starts Thursday and things are already selling out (sorry Tavi fans).

Check out the full program here.