Has the dominant literary form of the 19th and 20th centuries grown stale? Is it no longer the best means of delivering stories in the 21st century? Or does the classic literary novel remain the form best placed to deliver innovative, memorable writing? The Conference events under this theme shed light on the questions surrounding the future of that narrative form known as “the novel”.

Some of the highlights from what became one of the most popular themes of the Conference, The Future of the Novel, can be found below:

China Miéville spoke in Edinburgh and Toronto on The Future of the Novel

Tibor Fischer & Konstantin Milchin spoke in Krasnoyarsk, Russia on The Future of the Novel

Li Er spoke in Beijing on The Future of the Novel

Denise Mina spoke in Lisbon on The Future of the Novel

Since the first Edinburgh Writers’ Conference in 1962, there has been a renaissance in Scottish literature, bringing the voices of Scottish people of different backgrounds into ground-breaking novels by writers such as James Kelman, Alasdair Gray, Janice Galloway and A L Kennedy among many others. Over the past year, the Edinburgh World Writers Conference has asked the question: have there been similarly powerful developments in the ‘national literatures’ of other countries? The answer is yes.

Some of the highlights from what became one of the most popular themes of the Conference, A National Literature, can be found below:

Irvine Welsh spoke in Edinburgh on Nationality and Identity in the Novel Today

Anjali Joseph spoke in Cape Town on A national literature: reading and writing across boundaries

Sema Kaygusuz spoke in Izmir with a response by Panos Karnezis on A National Literature

Marlon James spoke in Trinidad and Tobago on A National Literature

Melbourne Writers Festival 2013

Friday 23 August 11:45am AEST

The Future of the Novel

Keynote: Teju Cole joined by Christy Dena
Chair: Liam McIlvanney

Read the Cole

Melbourne Keynote Transcript

Author Biographies:

Teju Cole is a writer, art historian, and photographer. He was born in the US in 1975 to Nigerian parents, raised in Nigeria, and currently lives in Brooklyn. He is the author of two books, a novella, Every Day is for the Thief, and a novel, Open City, which was awarded the Internationaler Literaturpreis 2013, 2012 PEN/Hemingway Award, the Rosenthal Family Foundation Prize of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the New York City Book Award for Fiction, and the Internationaler Literaturpreis; nominated for the National Book Critics Award, the New York Public Library’s Young Lions Award, and a prize from the Royal Society of Literature; and named one of the best books of 2011 by Time Magazine, the New Yorker, Newsweek, the Guardian, the Atlantic, the New York Times, and many others.

Christy Dena is a writer-designer of playful stories. She also consults on films, games, literature, performance, and TV to extend storylines across artforms. Recent projects include her web audio adventure for the iPad, a mix of radio drama and online storytelling. This project, AUTHENTIC IN ALL CAPS, was nominated for a Best Writing in a Game Award at the 2012 Freeplay Independent Games Festival. She wrote the first PhD on Transmedia Practice, and lectures worldwide at industry events and Universities on new writing. She co-wrote The Writer’s Guide to Making a Digital Living for the Australian Literature Board; was Digital Writing Ambassador for the 2012 Emerging Writers Festival; and awarded the 2013 Digital Writing Residency at The Cube, QUT’s new Science and Engineering Centre.

Melbourne Writers Festival 2013

Friday 23 August 1:30pm AEST

Style vs Content

Keynote: Kirsty Gunn joined by Margo Lanagan
Chair: Francesca Rendle-Short

Read the Gunn

Melbourne Keynote Transcript

Author Biographies:

Kirsty Gunn is the author of six works of fiction, including short stories and a collection of fragments and essays. Translated in over twelve territories and widely anthologised. Her books have been broadcast, turned into film, dance and theatre, and are the recipient of various prizes and awards including Scottish Book of the Year. She is also Professor of Writing Practice and Study at the University of Dundee where she established and directs the writing programme. She lives in London and Scotland with her husband and two daughters.

Melbourne Writers Festival 2013

Friday 23 August 3:30pm AEST

Should Literature Be Political?

Keynote: Amanda Lohrey (read by Alison Croggon) joined by Junot Diaz
Chair: Jeremy Harding

Read the Lohrey

Melbourne Keynote Transcript

Author Biographies:

Amanda Lohrey‘s first novel was The Morality of Gentlemen, published in 1984. It was followed by The Reading Group and then Camille’s Bread, winner of the Australian Literature Society’s Gold Medal and a Victorian Premier’s Literary Award in 1996. Her most recent novel is The Philosopher’s Doll (2004) which was longlisted for the Miles Franklin Award and the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. She is the author of the novella Vertigo (2008) and of the short story collection Reading Madame Bovary (2010) which won the Fiction Prize and the Steele Rudd Short Story Award in the 2011 Queensland Literary Awards.

Junot Díaz was born in the Dominican Republic and raised in New Jersey. He is the author of the critically acclaimed Drown; The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, which won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award; and This Is How You Lose Her, a New York Times bestseller and National Book Award finalist. He is the recipient of a MacArthur ‘Genius’ Fellowship, PEN/Malamud Award, Dayton Literary Peace Prize, Guggenheim Fellowship, and PEN/O. Henry Award. A graduate of Rutgers College, Díaz is currently the fiction editor at Boston Review and the Rudge and Nancy Allen Professor of Writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is the cofounder of Voices of Our Nation Workshop.

Edinburgh Book Festival 2013

Saturday 17 August 5:00pm BST

The Future of the Novel

With: China Miéville, Hari Kunzru & Sema Kaygusuz (left)
Chair: Susie Nicklin

The Novel: Tenacious as a cockroach? A year ago, the Edinburgh World Writers’ Conference kicked off with five events recalling the seminal Writers’ Conference of 1962. Since then, authors have been discussing the vital role the novel plays in cultural life, at events in 14 locations around the globe. What can we learn from the discussions? China Miéville, Hari Kunzru and Sema Kaygusuz talk about the future of fiction.

Author Biographies:

China Miéville‘s first novel was King Rat (1998), a dark fantasy relocating the Pied Piper to contemporary London. His second, Perdido Street Station (2000), is the first set in the city of New Crobuzon, and won the 2001 Arthur C. Clarke Award for Best Science Fiction and a 2001 British Fantasy Award. Two further books in this series are the British Fantasy award-winning The Scar (2002) and Iron Council, winner of a further Arthur C. Clarke Award. His other books include the young adult novel, Un Lun Dun (2007),  and a collection of short stories, Looking for Jake (2005). The City & The City (2009) is an existential thriller, winner of a further Arthur C. Clarke Award, Hugo Prize and World Fantasy Award for Best Novel. His non-fiction includes a study of international law. China Miéville is Associate Professor of Creative Writing at Warwick University and an Honorary Research Fellow at Birkbeck College School of Law.

Hari Kunzru was named The Observer Young Travel Writer of the Year, and in 2004 he became a member of the Executive Council of English PEN. He is on the editorial board of Mute, the culture and technology magazine. He has had short stories published in various magazines, and his first novel, The Impressionist (2002), won the 2002 Betty Trask Prize and the 2003 Somerset Maugham award and was also shortlisted for several awards, including the 2002 Whitbread First Novel Award. His second novel, Transmission (2004), centres on Arjun Mehta, a computer programmer, who lands a new job in America’s Silicon Valley, only to find things do not turn out as he imagines. This won him the inaugural ‘decibel’ award at the British Book Awards and was named a New York Times notable book of the year. In 2005 he published Noise, a short story collection, and his third novel, My Revolutions, in 2007. In 2003, Hari Kunzru was named by Granta magazine as one of twenty ‘Best of Young British Novelists’.

Sema Kaygusuz is a fiction writer living in Istanbul. Sema Kaygusuz was born in 1972 in Samsun. Due to her father’s itinerant military career, she lived in various regions across Turkey. Kaygusuz spent most of her childhood in rural areas and small cities, where she had the opportunity to be closely acquainted with the complexity and cultural diversity of her country. A wide range of folk tales, legends and stories, which the author excavated from various dialects and languages during her travels, remain to be her greatest sources of inspiration. In 1994, Kaygusuz moved to Istanbul, where she still resides. After publishing three collections of short stories, which won some of the most prestigious literary awards in Turkey, her first novel Yere Düsen Dualar (Prayers Falling on Earth) was published in 2006. The novel met with unanimous acclaim from both the Turkish and the international reviewers and won the 2009 Ecrimed-Cultura translation award,  the 2010 France-Turquie award in France, and the 2010 Balkanika award including six Balkan countries (Albania, Bulgaria, Greece, Romania, Serbia, Turkey). Her second novel, Yüzünde Bir Yer (A Place on Your Face), was published in 2009 and praised as the “literary Guernica”. Yüzünde Bir Yer will be published in April 2013 by Actes Sud in France. Her most recent narration, Karaduygun (Melancholic), was published in 2012 and will be published in March 2013 by Matthes & Seitz in Germany. Sema Kaygusuz is also the co-author of the movie script of Pandora’s Box, which won in 2008 The Golden Shell Best Film Award at the San Sebastian Film Festival. (Image credit: Muhsin Akgun)