THE FULL program for the 2017 Byron Writers Festival, which runs from 4-6 August, has been announced.
International guests include US debut novelist Kayla Rae Whitaker (The Animators); New York Times columnist Roger Cohen; Malaysian-Chinese-American journalist Mei Fong (One Child); Indonesian writer Eka Kurniawan; Indian-born British writer, lecturer and broadcaster Kenan Malik (From Fatwa to Jihad); and US philosophy professor Emrys Westacott (The Wisdom of Frugality).
They join previously announced international guests US science writer Dava Sobel; US biologist David George Haskell; and UK journalist and writer Christina Lamb.
The festival will also host three guests from India following festival director Edwina Johnson’s Australia Council trip to the country: novelist and poet Kunal Basu; novelist and performance storyteller Vayu Naidu; and artist and author Venkat Shyam.
Local authors include Kate Grenville, Hannah Kent, Ashley Hay, Anita Heiss, Kim Scott, Michael Robotham, A S Patric, Holly Throsby, Clementine Ford and Byron Bay-based Robert Drewe, who will launch his new novel Whipbird at the festival.
Among the festival’s highlights, Australian singers and memoirists Jimmy Barnes and Tex Perkins will come together for a special ABC Radio National session; satirist John Safran and journalist David Marr will unravel the second coming of Pauline Hanson and the rise of Trump; Richard Roxburgh and Andrew Knight will discuss the making of the TV series Rake; and Peter FitzSimons will argue the case for a republic in the annual Thea Astley Lecture.
The Kids Big Day Out on the Sunday will feature authors Sally Rippin, Hilary Badger, Tristan Bancks, Morris Gleitzman and Peter Helliar, among others.
Johnson said she is ‘especially proud of this year’s program for its cultural diversity, scope and probing amalgamation of important topics and different writing genres’.
For more information, visit the Byron Bay Writers Festival website here.