Jason Steger, Fairfax. First published August 2
*Pic: by Matt Newton, http://www.matthewnewton.com.au/
P.J. Harvey tops the bill for this year’s bumper Melbourne Writers Festival
One of English musician P.J. Harvey’s best-known albums is Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea. But when she appears at next month’s Melbourne Writers Festival, the stories she tells will be in the form of poetry she wrote to accompany the photographs of Irish photojournalist Seamus Murphy, with whom she collaborated on The Hollow of the Hand, about their travels to Kosovo, Afghanistan and Washington DC.
Harvey’s appearance is something of a coup for festival director Lisa Dempster, who unveiled this year’s literary beanfeast, her fourth, on Wednesday. It is Harvey’s only appearance in Australia. “The whole presentation of the poetry and the photos and a discussion afterwards will be one of the nights of the year,” Dempster said.
Other guests include British travel writer and novelist Geoff Dyer, Man Booker winners (Tasmanian) Richard Flanagan and Yann Martel, Irish novelist Eimear McBride, American novelists Angela Flournoy, Justin Cronin and Lev Grossman, American science writer Steve Silberman, British comedian, novelist and memoirist Alexei Sayle, human rights lawyer Philippe Sands, Inuit activist Sheila Watt-Cloutier, Australian writers Helen Garner, Anna Funder, Elizabeth Harrower and Charlotte Wood, and Indonesian public intellectual Goenawan Mohamad.
There will be readings, panels, conversations, lectures – including the first public one by Flanagan in his capacity as the inaugural Boisbouvier Professor of Australian literature at the University of Melbourne – and book launches.
The theme of this year’s festival, which has more than 350 events, is identity, a topic that Dempster says is important to everyone. “Particularly with everything that’s going on with our political environment. Australia is really questioning who we are as a nation and who we want to be. And one of the things that leads into that is who we are as people, in our communities, in our families and in our country. So it seemed like the perfect time time to delve into that.”
The festival begins on August 26 with the presentation of Australia’s most significant literary prize, the Miles Franklin …
