It was a Saturday night early in the life of the Melbourne Writers Festival. Elizabeth Jolley was due to deliver the keynote address at the Athenaeum Theatre and she was talking about a subject sure to pull a crowd – sex. But the inaugural chairman of the festival, Mark Rubbo, faced an unforeseen obstacle – the theatre had a sudden success.
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"Greg Hocking, who still runs the theatre, had an unexpected hit on his hands and he said we couldn't have it that night. So we ended up having to put Elizabeth on a bit earlier and there were 1000 people outside to see Wogs Out of Work waiting for her to finish."
Fast-forward almost 30 years and festival director Lisa Dempster is confident that there won't be a problem when British novelist Louis de Bernieres delivers the keynote address next month at the opening of the latest chapter of the annual literary beanfeast, which will be marking its 30th birthday.
"To think what Melbourne was like 30 years ago versus what it's like today in terms of festivals and culture, I think there's been a huge shift," Dempster said. "We're really happy to have been a part of that and to have led that for 30 years."
She said organisers had carefully considered how to celebrate the anniversary. "We thought that taking a historical approach would be interesting, but we thought a more exciting way to celebrate might be to identify who the significant literary figures of the future are going to be."
So the festival is promoting 30 writers, editors and illustrators under 30 "who we think are going to be leading our literary conversations in the years to come. There will be a series of events right across the festival where Melbourne audiences can come and discover these new writers who all have different, unusual and amazing approaches to their work." Among those in the "30 under 30" strand are Hannah Kent, Michaela Maguire, Luke Ryan and Erik Jensen.
Other big-name guests coming to MWF's birthday bash include British writers Sarah Waters, Jon Ronson, Antony Beevor, S.J. Watson and Will Self, activists and writers Naomi Klein, Tariq Ali and Eric Schlosser, Indonesian novelist Eka Kurniawan, American publisher and novelist Jonathan Galassi, US writers Sarai Walker, Daniel Handler (aka Lemony Snicket), Laurie Penny, and Sheng Keyi from China. Local guests include Nobel laureate J.M. Coetzee, Kate Grenville, Don Watson and many more.
There is a strong television stream featuring Homeland creator Gideon Raff and Rob Thomas of Veronica Mars fame and American novelist and writer of The Wire, Richard Price. "They will be appearing in a variety of different events, talking about their own writing and TV as a cultural artefact," Dempster said.
She said there would be 530 events across the 11 days of the festival. Bookings and the full program are available from noon at mwf.com.au on July 23. A guide to the festival will appear in The Age on July 25.
Five moments from the festival's past
1995: Then Australian Book Review editor Helen Daniel calls for the Miles Franklin judges to resign in the wake of the award going to Helen Demidenko (Darville), a call she repeated the following year at the Sydney Writers' Festival.
1996: The beginning of a long-running act when Clive James, who delivered the first keynote address at the Town Hall, and Peter Porter held their first on-stage discussion of poetry and other literary matters.
1998: A spat between bestselling novelist Bryce Courtenay and Text publisher Michael Heyward during and after a session on literary criticism.
1999: Geoffrey Robertson channels his wife Kathy Lette in a string of jokes in his keynote address at the Town Hall before discussing more serious matters emerging from his book Crimes against Humanity.
2006: A much-anticipated debate between academic and writer Robert Manne and Herald Sun columnist Andrew Bolt on the issue of the Stolen Generation.
Jason Steger is on the MWF programming advisory committee.
