Tag Archives: buffy

Mar15

Sydney Writers Festival Looks to the Buffyverse #SydneyWritersFestival

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Sydney Writers Festival have announced their theme, Lie to Me. And yes, Buffy fans, Michaela Maguire, the festival’s artistic director, has confirmed that this theme has been inspired by Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Not all lies are malicious and Maguire speaks of how Buffy’s request to Giles, ‘lie to me,’ when she has to stake a former friend,

speaks to the very human feeling of helplessness and the desire to feel as if everything is going to be alright even if you know it will never be the same. Maguire states that this plea to be lied to is “a request for a bedtime story in a world full of monsters.”

From Monday the 29th of April through to Sunday 5th of May, Sydney Writers Festival will be exploring all things Lie. Polite lies, filthy lies, lies for self preservation, lies for power and lies to torture. Lies that we tell others and lies that we tell ourselves. Not to mention, lies that those in power tell us to subdue the masses.

Speakers include:

  • Former editor of The New York Times, Jill Abramson
  • Daisy Johnson, who was the youngest ever author to be shortlisted for a Man Booker Prize
  • The executive director of the National Book Foundation, Lisa Lucas
  • Dunya Mikhail, who has been awarded the UN Human Rights Award for Freedom of Writing
  • Internationally fauned over, Man Booker winner George Saunders
  • Sir Simon Schama, who is a best selling author and documentary presenter
  • And many, MANY, MANY more

Tickets are now on sale and the 2019 program has been released. Go check out the official website to see all the wonderful events. Toni Jordan’s Editing Your Fiction Manuscript workshop looks particularly good, as does Elaine Castillo’s workshop (Re)writing the Canon – Fan Fiction and Other Radical Acts. I believe that Bryan Washington’s On Murakami will definitely be one to blow your library-card socks off, and the best thing is, it’s freeeeeee. Although, my personal favourite event of the festival, is always the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards held at the NSW State Library. Canapes, I love ’em.

For more information, follow:

And yes, I am a volunteer, how can I help?