Veronica Sullivan, Festival Director of the Melbourne Writers Festival

Veronica Sullivan is the Festival Director of the Melbourne Writers Festival she speaks to Vision Australia Radio presenter Chris Thompson, of Behind the Scenes in this podcast. 

The Melbourne Writers Festival (MWF) is an annual literary celebration held in Melbourne, Australia, recognized as a UNESCO City of Literature. The festival brings together writers, thinkers, and readers for a series of events, including readings, discussions, and workshops, aiming to inspire and engage audiences with the power of storytelling.

In 2025, the festival runs from May 8 to May 11, featuring a diverse lineup of local and international literary figures.

Vision Australia's Participation in MWF 2025:

As a proud sponsor of MWF 2025, Vision Australia is hosting two significant events at its Kooyong head office, both designed to be accessible to individuals who are blind or have low vision.

1. In Conversation with Kate Grenville

• Date & Time: Friday, May 9, 2025, from 6:00 PM to 7:00 PM AEST

• Location: Vision Australia, 454 Glenferrie Road, Kooyong VIC 3144

• Details: Award-winning author Kate Grenville discusses her latest novel, Unsettled: A Journey Through Time and Place, a memoir intertwining her family's history with the broader story of First Nations peoples' dispossession and displacement. The conversation will be facilitated by Daniel James, a Yorta Yorta writer and broadcaster. 

2. In Conversation with Nardi Simpson

• Date & Time: Friday, May 9, 2025, from 8:00 PM to 9:00 PM AEST

• Location: Vision Australia, 454 Glenferrie Road, Kooyong VIC 3144

• Details: Author Nardi Simpson discusses her newly released novel, The Belburd, exploring themes of motherhood, creation, belonging, and connection to Country. 

Both events are free to attend, with options for in-person attendance and live streaming. The venue is wheelchair accessible and equipped with facilities to accommodate guests with disabilities.

For more information and to register for these events, please visit Vision Australia's events page: Vision Australia

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

S1 (00:04):
Well, I guess up front we should declare that, um.
Vision Australia Radio is a media partner for the Melbourne
Writers Festival. Um, which for school students has already started today,
but for the rest of us starts a bit later
this week on Thursday. Um, the new festival director for

(00:26):
Melbourne Writers Festival is Veronica Sullivan, and she's hanging on
the line. Welcome to the show, Veronica.

S2 (00:31):
Thank you so much for having me. Chris.

S1 (00:33):
Hey. First festival. How's it going?

S2 (00:36):
It's wonderful. It's a beautiful fever dream. Um, and we're
just so excited to to have the, the main program
on this weekend and to welcome so many wonderful writers
and thinkers into Melbourne, both Australian and international, coming together
to celebrate books and stories.

S1 (00:54):
Were you a, um, Melbourne Writers Festival attendee over the
years before you, before you became the head honcho?

S2 (01:03):
Very much so. I actually started out volunteering with the
festival when I was about 21. So I've sort of
been involved in various capacities over the years, mostly as
an audience member and a volunteer. Um, but, you know,
always have had a really strong place in my heart
for what the festival means to the city and to
our readers. And so that's it's such a privilege to

(01:24):
to be directing and to have this year as my
first festival for an organization that I know is very
special to a lot of people in Melbourne.

S1 (01:31):
Mm. Does volunteering for something like the festival give you
a sort of insight that maybe others don't have to? The,
I guess, the ground level operation of, of of the
thing that you actually sit above?

S2 (01:46):
I think so. I mean, I think ideally, you know,
the audience will never be thinking about the duck seriously
paddling under the water. Um, but certainly as a young,
you know, bright eyed, bushy tailed volunteer, I kind of
got a sense of, oh, there's all these people working
behind the scenes, and this is how the greenroom runs,
and this is how it all comes together. And that's

(02:07):
actually the kind of initial fire in me to think
I would love to work in this industry one day
and love to work for these types of events. So
it's a it was a really beautiful glimpse and it
just means as well, you know, we've been, um, recruiting
and training and had our first batch of volunteers coming
through today with the schools program, and I just have
so much appreciation for these people who are giving up

(02:30):
their time and kind of coming in to help make
it all work, because we're a tiny team, and that
kind of community spirit and people pitching in is really
special for, for a small organization like the Writers Festival.

S1 (02:42):
Is this is this a festival program that you inherited,
or is it one that you've put together, or is
it a bit of both?

S2 (02:50):
Mostly, uh, what I put together. So, um, I kind
of came in with, with nothing in the slate, which
was an amazing.

S1 (02:58):
Oh, that's fresh start. Yeah, that's exciting and scary.

S2 (03:03):
Yeah, a bit of both. Absolutely true. Um, and so
it was quite a kind of shorter time frame I
had about six months from starting in the role in
August last year until launching the programme, so it's a
pretty tight turnaround for a programme. You know, ordinarily you'd
sort of have a full 12 months between festivals to
lay the foundations.

S1 (03:24):
Well and there's some there's.

S2 (03:25):
Some that it was, it was beautiful in a way. Um,
you know, just not overthink things and jumping in and
make it happen and just look for opportunities and how
to how to kind of bring them to life.

S1 (03:36):
Because there's some names in the programme that, you know,
on first glance, you might think would take a fair
bit of time to lock down and, you know, um,
and secure as guests. Um, so that's, uh, that's pretty good. Fast.
That duck is paddling really fast.

S2 (03:54):
Yes, very much so. And, you know, particularly with some
of our international guests, um, those are conversations that you
really want to start as early as possible. So that
was a big focus in my first few months was,
all right, how are we which internationals can we kind
of lock in and start to plan their trips to Australia? Um,
and also which, you know, everyone's calendars fill up so
quickly in this day and age, so I feel very,

(04:17):
very grateful. We had so many wonderful authors who were
so enthused about coming to the festival and being part
of it.

S1 (04:24):
Well, let's talk about some of those wonderful authors. Give us,
give us the headlines.

S2 (04:29):
Yes, absolutely. Um, so we've got a few kind of
highlights events in the program. We have the wonderful Marian Keyes,
who is, you know, a luminary, one of the best selling, uh,
Irish novelists of all time. And she's joining us for
two events, talking about her latest book, but also her career,
her kind of ability to write these incredibly popular and

(04:52):
readable books that also weave through dark themes with their humor. Um,
so I think she'll be absolutely wonderful. Um, we have
Asako Yuzuki, who is a Japanese author who's written a
novel called butter, which explores, um, food, feminism and true crime.
It's a thrilling and quite delicious, um, story of murder.

(05:15):
And she's a Japanese writer, as I mentioned. And her
session will be in Japanese and we'll be live.

S1 (05:20):
Oh fantastic.

S2 (05:20):
Places. Yeah. So I really wanted to have some multilingual
programming and just some things that are sort of a
little bit different. Um, we also have the wonderful Jimmy Barnes,
you know, rock and roll icon who'll be with us
to talk about his latest memoir.

S1 (05:34):
And so just talking, not singing. No.

S2 (05:38):
Well, he's got some some shows coming up, I think.
But we might see, you know, I always like to
just ask a musician.

S1 (05:43):
But he's a great he's a great writer.

S2 (05:46):
He is he's a raconteur, you know, and he's got
this amazing stories and kind of, um, wild shenanigans that
he's had throughout his career. So he's sort of ready
to share a lot of those, I think, and get
a bit nostalgic about some of his wilder days, which
is always fun. Um, and another just one more that
I'll mention is, uh, Jamila Rizvi and Rosie Waterland. So

(06:06):
two wonderful Australian writers and dear friends who have co-written
a book called Broken Brains, which is about their respective
experiences of, um, mental illness and brain health. So Jamila
had a brain tumor and Rosie has battled with chronic
PTSD and other kind of chronic mental health issues throughout

(06:28):
her life, but they've really found support in one another.
And so it's a celebration of their friendship and also
sort of a roadmap for anyone who struggles with brain health,
physical or mental, or love somebody who does and wants
to know how to support them. So that will be
a really beautiful celebration of friendship and resilience and kind
of the ways that we can support those in our

(06:49):
lives who need it most.

S1 (06:51):
One of the clever things I think the Melbourne Writers
Festival has always done has had really strong programs for
primary and secondary school students, you know, bringing that audience
in to a really well programmed part of the festival.
Not not not just tokenism, but real engagement. That, of course,
is an investment in future readers and future writers and

(07:14):
future festival goers. Tell us a bit about the program
that started today.

S2 (07:18):
Absolutely. So we have a schools program running throughout this
week during the day, and we have um, sessions for
primary school students, which run today and tomorrow. And then
we have secondary students coming in on Wednesday and Thursday.
And these are full days, um, with multiple authors, so
different topics and kind of each, each student will come

(07:39):
in and be exposed to a range of different ideas
and types of themes and styles of presentations. Um, some
of the events that have just been so wonderful to
put together and see come to life. We have a
wonderful artist and children's author named Nabeel Khan, who's a
mathematician and an artist, and a lot of his work

(08:00):
is about the ways that maths and geometry are part
of our everyday lives, part of nature, part of music. Um,
so he's kind of taking these concepts that, you know,
a lot of people might feel that maths is not
for them, but he shows, he brings it to life
through art and kind of looking at the world around us.
So that's a really, I think, a really great session

(08:21):
that's kind of, um, a polymath approach.

S1 (08:24):
You know, these.

S2 (08:25):
Are not separate. They're all around us. Um, so he's fantastic. Uh,
we have an American science fiction novelist. Neal Shusterman, who's
written over 50 books for young adults that are mostly
science fiction and dystopias. And he's talking about, you know,
this very idea of what is a dystopia and how
can writing and thinking about. You know, authoritarian or slightly

(08:49):
dark alternate worlds? What can that tell us about the
world that we live in today, and how can it
help us look towards a better world for ourselves? Um,
and we also have this wonderful young slam poet, Solli Raphael, who, uh,
was awarded the National Poetry Slam championship at the Sydney
Opera House when he was just 12 years old. Um,

(09:10):
and that he's now a young man in his early 20s.
So he's become kind of, um, you know, he's still
early in his literary career, but he's also someone who's
had this amazing poetic trajectory, and he'll be speaking to
the secondary students about poetry and identity and how you
can express your identity through poetry. And I think that

(09:30):
I'm excited about that because for the young people who
are attending to see someone who's very close to them
in age on stage and really recognize that young people's
voices matter and that they should be on our stages,
that we should be listening to them. I really want
to validate that for the students as well.

S1 (09:45):
Now, I mentioned at the start of our conversation that, um,
Vision Australia Radio is a media partner, has been for
the past eight years. Um, and uh, off the back
of that, we have an event happening here in the library. Um,
and in conversation with Nardi Simpson.

S2 (10:03):
Yes. That's right. So this Friday evening, uh, 8 p.m.
at the Vision Australia Library in Kooyong. And Nardi is
just Nardi Simpson. She's a storyteller. She's a singer songwriter, um,
who's had a long, multi-decade career as a musician. And
she's also a remarkable novelist. So her second novel, The Bellbird,

(10:24):
is her most recent. Uh, and it's a story of matriarchy, spirituality,
connection to country. She's she writes with a, you know,
with a musician's kind of voice where things weave together
and there are echoes and refrains. She's such an extraordinary
writer and thinker. And her event this Friday, I should
say it's free. And she'll be in conversation with the

(10:46):
wonderful First Nations journalist Daniel James.

S1 (10:49):
Fantastic.

S2 (10:49):
That's an absolute one not to miss. And for those
who are perhaps not in Melbourne, it will also be
live streamed. So I know that through the Vision Australia
Library website, you can register for the the zoom or
the live stream if you're not able to attend in person.
But if you do come along, Nadia will be very
happy to sign copies of her book and you can
have a yarn with her. Um. Nadia is also one
of our guest curators for the festival this year, so

(11:12):
we have two First Nations guest curators who have each
programmed a suite of events within the festival that really
speak to their passions and the things that they're interested
or excited or engaged with. And so she and the
ABC journalist Daniel Browning have both put together some incredible
events in the program.

S1 (11:32):
Fantastic. Um, where do we find out all this information, Veronica?

S2 (11:37):
I'm glad you asked, Chris. You can head to. And
you can look through the entire program. Um, we've got
lots of information, FAQs. Uh, but absolutely, it's all happening
this weekend. So there's a lot to choose from, and
I hope that listeners will come along and join us
at the festival.

S1 (11:58):
Well, I hope your little paddling duck feet get a
rest after the end of this week. Um, and, uh,
lucky you, you've got then a whole year to program
the festival. I know it's a luxury.

S2 (12:10):
We'll get through this weekend first. Uh, and. Yeah, it's
just as I said, it's such a special festival and
such a special opportunity to bring writers and readers together. So, um, we're,
you know, we're looking forward to to making that magic
and creating that community.

S1 (12:23):
Well, Veronica Sullivan, congratulations on your first festival, and I'll
look forward to talking to you again next year.

S2 (12:28):
Thanks so much, Chris. I'll speak to you then, if
not before.