Liminal's Top Picks for Melbourne Writers' Festival '18
It's MWF season again. And as usual, while the program is chock-full of panels, wallets aren't chock-full of cash. Besides, there are pages and pages of events to go through—how is one to know they haven't missed out on something worthwhile? I swear that every time I look, a panel I didn't notice before comes up to derail my entire list. D'oh.
But we've decided to put in the hard yards to save you some time. Here are our top 10 picks for MWF18, in no particular order:
Sat 25 Aug 8pm, Mission to Seafarers Main Bar
Adam Liaw: First We Eat
When Adam Liaw won Season Two of Masterchef Australia in 2010, there was hardly any dialogue on Asian-Australian representation in media. Now an SBS TV presenter and author of five cookbooks, he strives to create a strong presence in our hearts and through our screens (both his Twitter and Instagram are worth following). This convo with forthcoming Liminal interviewee and writer/critic/expert live-tweeter Sonia Nair will prove to be nourishing indeed. Now, who's going to live-tweet this?
Sat 26 Aug 8.30pm, Deakin Edge, Fed Square
They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us
American essayist Hanif Abdurraqib writes beautifully-crafted meditations on music that attempt to reckon with the personal and the political within popular culture. This panel expands on this as he chats with a group of fellow music writers and producers of colour to discuss the many ways music and activism can intertwine.
Wed 29 Aug 7pm, The Thornbury Theatre
Pretty For an Aboriginal: Set It Alight
If you've come across Nakkiah Lui's work, most recent of all the twice sold-out play Blackie Blackie Brown, you'll know that she aims to highlight pertinent issues surrounding colonialism, racism and Indigenous dispossession through stage, audio and screen. Together with her fellow Pretty For an Aboriginal podcast host (and award-winning actress) Miranda Tapsell—plus acclaimed critic/author and writer of the new Black Panther comic series Ta-Nehisi Coates, no less—they talk on dismantling systemic structures within the entertainment industry. Not to be missed.
Sat 25 Aug 3pm, Belleville
Brow Talks: Michelle Law
As interviewee #13 in Liminal last year, writer and playwright-extraordinaire Michelle Law said, “There’s a lot about the state of the world that angers me and I find comedy the most constructive and fulfilling way of addressing that anger because you’re making people laugh.” What other ways can we effectively channel the anger that we bear in our art and writing? Thanks to a partnership with beloved literary journal The Lifted Brow, this free event seeks to explore the ways we can harness anger to produce valuable creative output.
Sat 25 Aug 4pm, ACMI Studio 1
Staged: Carrying The World
In 2017, Maxine Beneba-Clarke won the Victorian Premier's Literary Award for Poetry for her stunning collection Carrying The World. See this multi-award-winning author and slam-poetry champion perform some of her most lyrical and emotive work on stage and be blown away.
Sat 25 Aug 2.30pm, Deakin Edge, Fed Square
West Writers: In Parallel Universes
The Footscray-based West Writers' Group are a formidable collective to look out for: over the years, it has nurtured writers and writing of high calibre whose work not only inspires and moves others, but also brings out vital, previously marginalised narratives to the fore. Produced by some of the group's artists (one of whom being our recent interviewee #63 Sumudu Samarawickrama), this performance showcase will not disappoint.
Fri 31 Aug 2.30pm, ACMI The Cube
Radical Self-Care
If you're a regular Liminal reader, you'll know that we ask all our interviewees this: How do you practice self-care? See an eclectic group of activists talk about their approaches to self-care and what it means to them, especially in a time where the Audre Lorde term has been taken out of its original context and used by corporations and Instagram influencers alike.
Fri 31 Aug 1pm, ACMI The Cube
Ownership of Our Narrative
There's a lot more talk on diversity and minority inclusion in 2018 than ever before. But how far have we come and how much more do we have to go? This (free!) roundtable unpacks this discussion further, in the hopes of moving beyond tokenism and allowing for many more complex, varied voices in the process.
Sat 1 Sep 11.30am, Fed Square
A Toast: Benjamin Law's Dream Dinner Party
There's a lot more talk on diversity and minority inclusion in 2018 than ever before. But how far have we come and how much more do we have to go? This (free!) roundtable unpacks this discussion further, in the hopes of moving beyond tokenism and allowing for many more complex, varied voices in the process.
Wed 29 Aug 6.30pm, Deakin Edge, Fed Square
Alexis Wright: Boisbouvier Oration
Alexis Wright's books describes the intricate bonds between land, faith and storytelling as an Indigenous person in so-called Australia. Tracker, her most recent memoir of Tracker Tilmouth—which won the Stella Prize in 2018—contains multiple first-person accounts instead of following a western mode of biography, in the hopes of following an Aboriginal methodology of storytelling. As such, this talk on the purpose and power of literature is bound to be an insightful one.
Find out more
mwf.com.au