Upstart writers festival aiming to take Melbourne’s mantle

But the 38-year-old event is in danger of being eclipsed, thanks to the buzz around a two-year-old upstart that now finds itself the flavour of the month.In just its second year, the Sorrento Writers Festival, held over the Anzac Day weekend, is close to eclipsing Melbourne’s main event, having sold 15,743 tickets and staging 135 events not counting school events, with 190 speakers.

“We are going to beat Melbourne Writers Festival and be the biggest in Victoria,” said Sorrento Writers Festival founder and directorAnd now the Mornington Peninsula festival, once derided by some in the literature community as “Prue and Trude putting on a writers festival for their rich friends”, is contemplating parking some tanks on the Melbourne Writers Festival lawn.

. MWF says it has had a year of record-breaking ticket sales, with multiple events selling out within days of going on sale, and nearly one-third of events sold out. The festival told us all this without saying how many tickets get sold.“The Melbourne Writers Festival is a wonderful institution with a very strong brand and we hope they have a great week this week,” Perkin said.

“One of the greatest threats we face right now is the radicalisation of young people, particularly through social media. Yes, it is time to wake up to this threat.”in the US and Australia, and told CBD they were “not benign gatherings”, and accused demonstrators, through their sloganeering, of supporting a terrorist agenda and calling for the destruction of the state of Israel.

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