It was a slightly nervous-looking Chip Rolley who took the stage at Sydney’s Walsh Bay last night to announce the program for his inaugural Sydney Writers’ Festival as artistic director.

This year’s SWF is staged at a critical moment in history, he said, “a time when the world is emerging from global economic collapse and threatened by the prospect of catastrophic climate change.”

“With this year’s festival I hope to encourage questioning and debate around some of the most pressing ideas of our time.”

The big-ticket events include the opening address, to be delivered by Iranian-American author Reza Aslan, and Peter Carey’s closing address, the content of which has not yet been disclosed. Carey will also do an event in which he talks about his latest book, Parrot and Olivier in America, with Granta editor John Freeman.

Another highlight is a two-hour concert of Indian devotional music and spiritual transformation based on William Dalrymple’s latest book, Nine Lives. In addition, John Ralston Saul will speak about the collapse of globalism and Tim Flannery, Bill McKibben, Ross Garnaut and Clive Hamilton are on a panel discussing climate change.

Iconoclast and professional atheist Christopher Hitchens will return to Sydney to talk about his autobiography, Hitch 22. “Last time it was God. This time it’s an even bigger subject,” Rolley said. Wall St Journal economics editor David Wessel in conversation with Paul Keating is also sure to be popular.

But why are the big female names so heavily outnumbered by the men, and why are they talking on such “female” topics? The biggest female star of the festival is Elizabeth Gilbert who, in my opinion, has written the worst book of the past decade. If you want to know what extremely privileged, intellectually lightweight, self-obsessed 30-something American women do when they get divorced, then read Eat, Pray, Love, which is a kind of self-help book with menus.

The other big female drawcard is Catherine Millet, a Frenchwoman who has written graphically about having s-x with hundreds of men. At least Lionel Shriver (who is a woman) has written a book about the American health-care system. Why isn’t there a high-profile female writer talking about the economy or climate change?  I’ve read at least three books about the GFC in the past year by women, all of which were excellent.

These are valid questions to ask of an organisation that receives so much public funding. NSW arts minister Virginia Judge yesterday announced a $151,500 funding boost, bringing the NSW government’s support to more than $430,000. The SWF is now the third largest annual literary festival in the world, she said.

Anyway, that aside, the program looks great and Walsh Bay will be humming with visitors come opening day on May 15. I’m hoping that Crikey will not attract as much attention as last year, when Guy Rundle got thrown out of a session on censorship; his self-shot video of the incident was a huge hit on our website. This year, we will try to be better behaved.