Robert Dessaix will speak on th benefits of being older.THIS year's Melbourne Writers Festival could be the best ever, according to outgoing director Steve Grimwade.


Robert Dessaix (right) will speak on the benefits of being older. Photo: Peter  Mathew


His big coup is the previously announced squad of visitors from The New Yorker, but the festival also has three keynote speakers - Simon Callow on Dickens, Germaine Greer on Australian English and Robert Dessaix  on the benefits of being older - plus a series of talks on big ideas.


But Grimwade says the festival still has plenty of its traditional fare - novelists, who remain ''the heart and soul of the program'', historians and poets.
So among the writers heading to town are Britons John Lanchester, Chris Cleave and Patrick Gale, Ireland's John Boyne, Nigerian Sefi Atta; Indian novelists Mita Kapur, Uday Prakash, Swedish crime writer Asa Larsson, essayist Pico Iyer, American novelist David Vann and Lebanese poet and activist Joumana Haddad. 
 Grimwade says in the past five years festival audiences have become younger.
The festival begins on August 23.