In its 56th year, the Brisbane Writers Festival (BWF) puts the question to all its attendees: 'what does the world need now?'.
All Burt Bacharach jokes aside, the theme for this years BWF is a serious response to concerns about the current state of the world with topics as far ranging as raising teens, ending epidemics, politics and the environment and much more.
“The things that people are talking about around the dinner table or with their mates in a share house or at uni or wherever they are, the sort of stuff that comes up on your phone when you're scrolling through,” Acting UPLIT CEO Ann McLean explains about the theme.
“You're looking at fires in California and wondering if people really have gone too far and global warming is never going to turn around. So we have a massive programme on environment. We look at the deep and meaningful stuff about AI and what are the ethics.”
With a lot of grave concerns to be discussed, Ann assures us there's plenty to be optimistic about at this year's festival.
“We look at the possibilities too so it's not all dark and gloomy, it's very positive,” she says.
“There's Dr Jonathan D Quick talking about the possibility of ending epidemics in this world and the lovely Tim Dunlop who's coming with a positive perspective of the future – Tim's genuinely convinced that as a world we can create a better future for ourselves and he actually has tangible actions.
“This is the thing: to create a festival experience that's immersive, that's so engaging and rich for people so they come away with a new perspective or a new idea or a different way of thinking about things, that's the aim.”
One of the major international attractions will be best-selling US young adult author Veronica Roth who wrote the immensely popular 'Divergent' series and has recently released her next series 'Carve The Mark'.
“To work with Veronica is a real pleasure, she's on the kid's programme and also the free YA [young adult] programme,” Ann says.
“This new series she's written, 'Carve The Mark', looks at subcultures, underground activity, terrorism; it looks at self-harming, it looks at siblings and relationships with siblings, spirituality. It pulls in everything that's in the diaspora of an American youth today and boils it down to two dystopian future novels. It's the most phenomenal experience to read; you feel like you're running along like a steam train.”
Not to forget about the local contingent, BWF presents a wealth of Australian authors who Ann says are doing some of the best work in the business at the moment.
“In my mind we're in a halcyon moment in fiction in Australia. We've got incredible international writers but Australian writers now are producing the most astounding stories,” she says.
“Brisbane boy Trent Dalton, who's been around the traps for a little while, his research entailed living on the streets of Brisbane, immersing himself in the lives of people who are completely invisible to most people. It's so well-written, it's deeply immersive and it takes you to a place where you don't want to pull out; you just want to keep going with the story until the end.”
