M on the Bund 2019 LitFest
The Shanghai International Literary Festival by M on the Bund is China’s leading English-language literary festival, creating a dialogue between writers and readers along Shanghai’s famous Bund. Founded and organized by Michelle Garnaut of the M Restaurant Group, the festival brings together emerging and established writers of all genres for a taste of the current literary landscape.
Each year the two week festival features engaging panel discussions, literary lunches, workshops and live events as well as kids’ sessions, big names and more on the weekend. If you're not in Shanghai, don't fret, all sessions are also uploaded online via the festival podcast (available on iTunes, Stitcher and Google Play).
Over the past 17 years, the Shanghai International Literary Festival has hosted over 1,000 writers and has seen some of the world’s greatest writers and thinkers in conversation.
This year, will be no different, boasting an notible programme of writers including two Aussie favorites:
Billy Griffiths
Author of Deep Time Dreaming: An Exploration of Australia’s Past & Present
Billy Griffiths is a writer, historian and research fellow at the Alfred Deakin Institute (Deakin University) in Melbourne, Australia.
He is the author of The China Breakthrough: Whitlam in the Middle Kingdom, 1971 (Monash University Publishing, 2012) and Deep Time Dreaming: Uncovering Ancient Australia (Black Inc., 2018), which won the 2018 John Mulvaney Book Award. His work has been commended by the Queensland Literary Awards, the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards and the Australian Council for Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences.
You can see Billy Griffiths in action on Thursday, 14 March at 6:00 pm as he explores what it means to live in a place of great antiquity, with its complex questions of ownership and belonging.
Richard Fidler
Author of Ghost Empire: A Journey into medieval Constantinople
Richard Fidler is an Australian author and radio broadcaster. His hour-long, in-depth interview program, Conversations, is the most popular podcast in Australia, generating more than 30 million program downloads each year. Richard is the author of two books that blend history with personal memoir. Ghost Empire, his first book, brings to life the history of the dazzling Byzantine empire, centred around the legendary Constantinople. His second book, Saga Land (co-authored with Kári Gíslason), is a journey into the Viking sagas of Iceland.
Richard will be Richard Fidler and Paul French will be discussing the story of the lost city, and how its culture continues to haunt the world on Friday, 22 March at at 12:00pm.
View the event website and the full two week program here.
