Sneak in a Sydney Writers' Festival fix before the official launch of the 2011 program on April 1 with an exceptional double bill: Andrew O'Hagan and Annie Proulx. Booker Prize nominated O'Hagan's new novel is the 'memoir' of the Maltese terrier owned by Marilyn Monroe — intrigued yet? — and Pulitzer Prize winner Proulx has written Bird Cloud, a personal study of the stories that comprise a life.

Both authors are concerned with genealogies of family or place and the relationship between memory and physical space. O'Hagan insists that The Life and Opinions of Maf the Dog, and of His Friend Marilyn Monroe is not just an act of canine ventriloquism, but a study of modern celebrity and of the American century.

Proulx's memoir of building a "poemlike" house examines coolly her own peripatetic nature and the rich history of the Wyoming wetlands and prairie.

Turn your mind inward and your ears outward as two brilliant minds discuss our obsessive search for a place in the world on March 10.