Introducing Manly Writers' Festival
A Booker Prize winner and one of Australia’s leading investigative journalists will be headline guests at the inaugural Manly Writers’ Festival to be held in March next year.
Author and playwright Thomas Keneally, AO is an Australian living treasure who has written novels, non-fiction, essays and plays in a writing career spanning 60 years. He has won multiple awards including the prestigious Booker Prize for Schindler’s Ark and is a four-time winner of the Miles Franklin Award.
His most recent works include a novel, Fanatic Heart, and a memoir titled A Bloody Good Rant: My Passions, Memories and Demons, both published last year. Keneally will be the special guest at An Evening with Thomas Keneally as part of the festival.
Journalist and author Nick McKenzie is a multiple Walkley-award winning journalist who works for Nine Entertainment and has also presented major investigations for Nine’s 60 Minutes and the ABC’s Four Corners and 7.30 Report.
McKenzie’s expertise spans defence, national security, corporate malfeasance, foreign affairs, and organised crime and corruption. His work has sparked many national and state inquiries, Royal Commissions and Parliamentary inquiries leading to significant legislative change. Earlier this year, he published Crossing the Line – the Inside Story of Murder, Lies and a Fallen Hero, a book on the investigation into the war crimes of Ben Roberts-Smith.
Keneally and McKenzie are among the authors, journalists and writers who will take part in the first-of-its-kind festival for Manly, which will also include children’s and schools’ programs.
The theme of the festival is Connecting through Storytelling and aims to bring together readers, writers, and thinkers for discussion on big and small issues.
The festival’s founder and Northern Beaches writer and publisher, Bonita Mersiades, says the event aims to celebrate Manly’s cultural side.
“Manly is a destination point in Sydney that is best known for the beach and the ferry, but there is an active cultural component here with many high-profile and hidden gem authors and writers,” said Ms Mersiades.
“We especially want to give writers who are not-so-well known an opportunity to talk about their work, as well as discuss big and small issues of interest to the community.”
As well as Keneally’s body of work and McKenzie’s Crossing the Line, the festival will canvass books on issues as diverse as trust, kindness, grief, crime, history, politics, and sport.
The children’s program will include a reading from a book about courage and responsibility, while the schools’ program will include a workshop on tools to help the creative writing process. The festival will also include one-on-one conversations and panel discussions.
Other authors and speakers will be announced over coming months with the full program including venues to be published in early 2024.
All profits from the sale of tickets to the Manly Writers’ Festival will be shared between the Aboriginal-led Literacy for Life Foundation and local community cancer charity, Northern Beaches Community Cancer Charity.
Interested readers are encouraged to keep up to date by registering at www.manlywritersfestival.com.au or by following the Manly Writers’ Festival on Twitter (@ManlyWriters), Instagram and Facebook (@manlywritersfestival).
The festival is proudly supported by the Northern Beaches Council and local Northern Beaches publishing house, Fair Play Publishing, of which Mersiades is publisher.
