Sydney Writers’ Festival marks that special time of the year when the city is transformed by readers and writers. It’s a thinking season, where a world of ideas will unfold. Sydney Writers’ Festival 2014 runs Monday May 19 to Sunday May 25 with a special early event featuring Vince Gilligan on May 1.
Eleanor Catton Robert Dessaix Alice Walker Amy Tan The 2014 Festival will showcase more than 40 international writers and over 300 Australians.
In the spotlight are: Vince Gilligan, Eleanor Catton, Emma Donoghue, A.M. Holmes, Camilla Lackberg, Gary Shteyngart, Dav Pilkey, Alice Walker, Irvine Welsh, Jang Jin-sung, Andrew Solomon, Sandi Toksvig, Amy Tan, Reza Aslan, Jim Al-Khalili, Christos Tsiolkas, Richard Flanagan, Janette Turner Hospital, Thomas Keneally, Robert Dessaix, Kate Ceberano, Tim Ferguson, Sian Prior, Alexis Wright, Collette Dinnigan, Michael Leunig, Michael Kirby & Tim Cope.
Jemma Birrell, in her second year as Artistic Director of Sydney Writers’ Festival said at the program launch:
“In its 17th year the 2014 Sydney Writers’ Festival explores writing that challenges, provokes and questions our concepts of culture, history and identity. Over 400 writers will bring their insight and knowledge, their creativity and contemplation, to help us see life from a different perspective.
Pushing all kinds of boundaries, the writers will make you laugh, bring you to tears and lead you to places you’ve never been. They’ll educate and enlighten, exposing the truth, the lies and all the grey bits in between”.
This year’s Festival Opening Address on Tuesday May 20 at Walsh Bay’s Sydney Theatre will feature American National Book Award winner Andrew Solomon. In his latest book Far From the Tree, he tells the stories of hundreds of families affected by disability and difference and makes the case that it’s diversity that unites us.
The Festival Closing Address on Sunday May 25 also at the Sydney Theatre, will be given by bestselling author of Room and Frog Music Emma Donoghue. She will speak about the transformative powers of literature: the way it invites, provokes, charms, challenges and troubles readers. She shows how writers help change the world, one reader at a time.
Sydney Writers’ Festival begins early this year with Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan appearing at the Sydney Town Hall on Thursday May 1. In his only Australian public appearance Gilligan will give insights into the creative process behind the phenomenally successful, Breaking Bad. The Sydney Writers’ Festival week which features more than 400 international and Australian writers then runs Monday May 19 – Sunday May 25.
Vince Gilligan: Breaking Bad.
Thursday May 1, 7pm – 8.15pm
Sydney Town Hall
Premium $45, A Reserve $35/$28 Bookings 9250 1988 www.swf.org.au
Other international fiction headliners include:
• 28 year old Man Booker Prize-winning Eleanor Catton, The Luminaries.
• Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist Adam Johnson, writes about North Korea in The Orphan Master’s Son.
• Emma Donoghue is an Irish-born playwright, literary historian and novelist now living in Canada, The Room & Frog Music.
• American novelist A.M. Holmes, won the 2013 Women’s Prize for Fiction, May We Be Forgiven.
• Sweden’s top selling crime writer Camilla Lackberg, The Lost Boy.
• Children’s author, Dav Pilkey has sold more than 70 million copies of his series, Captain Underpants.
• Activist writer, Alice Walker. Pulitzer winner for The Color Purple.
• Rabble-rouser and Scottish independence advocate, Irvine Welsh, The Sex Lives of Siamese Twins.
• Much loved novelist, Amy Tan, The Valley of Amazement.
For more details, visit www.swf.org.au
