‘The broad idea of vision' will underpin this year's Sydney Writers Festival program, says artistic director Wendy Were.

‘More than ever, it feels as though we are in a time of setting targets and goals ... Future imaginings; utopian dreamings; dystopian visions; fear of annihilation; the drive towards conservation; reconciliation and indigenous politics; an altered sense of personal and civic responsibility; mobilisation, organisation and political activism; hope and optimism: these ideas all feature strongly in the sessions,' Were said. 

Jeanette Winterson will deliver the festival's opening address, ‘Get a Book, Get a Life' on Tuesday 20 May, and Pulitzer Prize-winning Dominican-American novelist Junot Diaz will wrap things up on Sunday 25 May.

In between will be more than 330 sessions involving over 400 writers. International guests include Anne Enright, Sarah Hall, Peter Ho Davies, Vincent Lam, David Davidar, Mo Hayder, John Burnside, Forrest Gander, Hermione Lee, Simon Sebag Montefiore, Jon Lee Anderson, David Rieff, Michael Pollan, Peter Heller, Ian Klaus, Sadanand Dhume, Loretta Napoleoni, Lynne Segal, Imran Ahmad, Ryan Knighton, Heather O'Neill and Stefan Merrill Block.

Among the more than 300 Australian participants will be Georgia Blain, Matthew Condon, Robyn Davidson, Luke Davies, Michelle de Kretser, Lisa Forrest, Tim Flannery, Helen Garner, Gail Jones, Joan London, Judith Lucy, Malcolm Knox, Robert Manne, David Marr, Chris Masters, Emily Rodda, John Tranter, Christos Tsiolkas, Steve Toltz, Lee Tulloch, Don Watson, Jana Wendt and Charlotte Wood, Tony Abbott, Meredith Burgmann, Bob Carr, Carmen Lawrence, Maxine McKew and Margaret Reynolds.

Tickets to paid events are now on sale. For full details of this year's program, go to the Sydney Writers' Festival website, http://www.swf.org.au.

This article from Thorpe Bowker's Weekly Book Newsletter and Media Extra is reproduced by kind permission of Thorpe-Bowker, a division of R R Bowker LLC. © Copyright 2008, Thorpe-Bowker

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