The 2019 Booker prizewinner, Bernardine Evaristo, Three Women author Lisa Taddeo and essayist Leslie Jamison are among the Sydney Writers festival lineup, which was announced on Thursday evening.
Joshua Wong – a student activist who played a pivotal role in pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong – will be appearing via video link. The program also features Uncanny Valley author Anna Wiener; The Blazing World and Memories of the Future author Siri Hustvedt; Dark Emu author Bruce Pascoe; and Australian actor Yael Stone.
Held from Monday 27 April to Sunday 3 May, the program features more than 400 Australian and international authors. In an email sent to some writers speaking at the festival, artistic director Michaela McGuire said that the festival was “proceeding as planned” despite the spread of coronavirus, which has caused the cancellation of South by South West, Miami’s Ultra festival, and most recently Dark Mofo, which had been set for June in Hobart. Coachella has been postponed until October.
“There are inevitable lineup changes every year - but we are expecting more than most,” McGuire warned at the launch on Thursday, before announcing that Ann Patchett had cancelled.
This year’s festival theme is Almost Midnight, a reference to the metaphor of the Doomsday Clock which has been maintained by members of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists since 1947. Since its latest update on 23 January – even before the coronavirus took hold – the clock has been sitting at 100 seconds to global catastrophe, or “midnight”: the closest it has ever been. The apocalyptic signal is a result of “two simultaneous existential dangers – nuclear war and climate change”, which have been compounded by a third: “cyber-enabled information warfare.”
McGuire said the program “celebrates the writers and thinkers who are writing and fighting to reverse the clock’s movement … writers will challenge careless rhetoric, call out defiance of scientific fact, and talk about political paralysis. There will also be stories of hope and renewal.”
The festival will be opened by Evaristo, who won the 2019 Booker prize alongside Margaret Atwood for her book Girl, Woman, Other; and Gomeroi poet, author and critic Alison Whittaker. The pair will deliver an address on the theme, with Nell Zink, author of The Wallcreeper, Mislaid and Doxology, delivering the closing night address.
Other international headliners include Jeff VanderMeer (Dead Astronauts), Colum McCann (Apeirogon), Nesrine Malik (We Need New Stories) and the hosts of Slate podcast Thirst Aid Kit, Bim Adewunmi and Nichole Perkins.
Slate’s Dear Prudence columnist Daniel Lavery (formerly Daniel Mallory Ortberg) will be returning to Australia for the festival with his new memoir, Something That May Shock and Discredit You. Nicolás Giacobone (Birdman, The Crossed-Out Notebook); Julia Phillips (Disappearing Earth) and Golriz Ghahraman (Know Your Place) will also be appearing.
Australian guests include Leah Purcell, Paul Kelly, Clare Bowditch and Shaun Micallef, alongside authors of books selected by Guardian staff as “Unmissable” Australian releases: Pascoe (Young Dark Emu), Christos Tsiolkas (Damascus), Tara June Winch (The Yield), Archie Roach (Tell Me Why), Vicki Laveau-Harvie (The Erratics) and Charlotte Wood (The Weekend).
Malcolm Turnbull, Blanche D’Alpuget, Bob Brown and Julia Baird will also be speaking.
• Sydney writers festival takes place 27 April-3 May, with tickets on sale Friday 13 March. Many headline speakers are also speaking at the Wheeler Centre in Melbourne
• On 13 March 2020 this article was amended to correct the spelling of Bernardine Evaristo and Anna Wiener’s names.
