Longing for the philosophical enlightenment, combative spark and intellectual smugness that can only come from a discussion panel loaded with literary heavyweights? Long no longer, the Sydney Writers' Festival program has been announced today and will be actualised from May 15 to 23. Although skyrocketing popularity has come with a matching price tag and occasionally exclusive feel at the sprawling Hickson Road Wharf hub, about half of this year's events are still free and accessible to struggling wordsmiths. The big names in 2010 include national icon Peter Carey, the world's most famous loudmouth Christopher Hitchens, novelists Lionel Shriver and Colm Toibin, Iranian-American scholar Reza Aslan and journalist Michael Otterman. As well as returning favourites (Erotic Fan Fiction, the First Tuesday Bookclub taping), a number of new events pique the interest: A barefaced attempt to please the young people by talking about Twitter succeeds with the genuinely interesting and provocative Dissident Cafe and Dissident Teahouse (facilitated Twitter conversations with persecuted writers and activists in Iran and China, respectively); the PEN Gives Voice reading of imprisoned writers' works, hosted by John Ralston Saul; the Have We All Been Conned all-star climate change panel with Clive Hamilton, Tim Flannery, Ross Garnaut and Ben McKibben; and I'm very intrigued to know whether we live in No Country for Young Women, where writerly ambitions are imposed upon by the "newly retro Mad Men world". A lateral, place-based way to browse the program is a nice touch. The full program will be published in the Sydney Morning Herald tomorrow (just in time for ticket sales, which also kick off then) and is also available on the SWF site. Not to be outdone, the Sydney Film Festival, coming up from June 2 to 14, has given us a taster of what's to come when the full program is released on May 5. The riot girl glory of Joan Jett and Cherie Currie biopic The Runaways comes as a particular treat, but Australian premieres of Roman Polanski's The Ghost Writers (starring Ewen McGregor), Banksy's Exit Through The Gift Shop and the overweight-Gerard Depardieu farce Mammuth, among others, offer plenty of promise.