Out of the blog, into the world!

Should your life be so lacking in stimulii as to wish to see the author of this blog creep out from behind his keyboard and into the real world, then you'll have your chance this week; both physically and audibly.

This coming Thursday, I'll be facilitating two panels at the Melbourne Writers' Festival; in other words introducing two seperate groups of writers who will in theory be discoursing about the precise topics of the panels in question, but who really are engaged in little more than a marketing exercise designed to promote their latest books. Moi, cynical? Heaven forfend!

At 3:45pm in the Bagging Room at the Malthouse Theatre, I'll be chairing a panel called Refined Tastes, featuring authors John Lanchester and David Hewson, and discussing the differences and similarities between author and character when it comes to writing about art, architecture, food and wine, and similar subjects.

Then, at 6;30pm, in the Merlyn Theatre, I'll be facilitating a discussion with authors Janine Burke and Philip Jones called Collector's Edition, on the psychology of bringing things together. Festival Director Rosemary Cameron should have been a panellist on this one, methinks, although maybe the collective commercial demands of the publishers who seem to run the MWF from behind the scenes prohibited her from doing so.....?

Then, this coming Friday, I'll be shirking off work for an hour or so and wandering over to the Southbank studios of the ABC, to co-host The Conversation Hour with Jon Faine on 774 ABC. Our guests will be musician Mia Dyson, and a couple of writers who are in town for the MWF - which means above and beyond my usual stupid workload I have a thick stack of books to work through. Oh joy!