"We're living in a period of flux," Birrell says, "in our relation to technology, our urge to go back to nature, where do we find a sense of purpose, big human issues of death and grief, depression and happiness. It came to me strongly in discussions of what people are interested in and the books being published."

The theme of this year's festival, How to Live?, will be addressed in many ways, light and dark, by 473 writers at 370 events in the week May 18-24 by the harbour at Walsh Bay, around the city, and at suburban and regional venues.

Pakistani author Mohsin Hamid will give the opening address on how we can find meaning amid constant global conflict and accelerating migration.

Douglas Coupland, the Canadian writer, artist and futurist who coined the term Generation X, is still at the cutting edge of popular culture and will talk about how the internet has changed our brains and our world in "the age of earthquakes".

Insights into the brain also come from the psychiatrist Norman Doidge, another Canadian famed for his books on neuroplasticity, and Paul Dolan, an expert on new ideas about happiness.

American Starlee Kine, who contributes to the popular radio program This American Life and a new podcast company, will explain why we are addicted to listening.

The Good Wife actor and memoirist Alan Cumming will discuss his career and his traumatic relationship with his father. The closing address by Helen Macdonald, the British author of another acclaimed memoir about her father's death, H Is for Hawk, will look at nature's role in teaching us how to live.

American surgeon and New Yorker writer Atul Gawande will give his perspective on mortality, while the quirky Caitlin Doughty will give an entertaining insight into her work as a mortician.

The venerable British couple playwright-novelist Michael Frayn and literary biography Claire Tomalin will talk about topics from theatre to Dickens, with a reading of Frayn's new playlettes at the Eternity Playhouse in Darlinghurst.

Among many novelists are Britain's David Mitchell and Booker Prize winner Ben Okri, Australia's Booker winner Richard Flanagan, Miles Franklin winner Evie Wyld, American crime writer Michael Connelly, Anthony Horowitz, the author of Sherlock Holmes and James Bond novels and teen fiction, and – in a growing children's program – Britain's biggest-selling children's author David Walliams, also known from TV's Little Britain.

The world's most popular thriller writer, James Patterson, will appear at Sydney Town Hall on May 8, one of two early festival events; the other is with Julia Gillard on May 1.

The media view of life and death is represented by the Guardian's Nick Davies, who exposed the News of the World phone-hacking scandal; Christina Lamb, author of books about Malala Yousafzai and Western neglect of Pakistan; Indonesian press freedom activist Ayu Utami, and Norwegian war correspondent Asne Seierstad, whose books include The Bookseller of Kabul and One of Us, about Anders Breivik, who massacred 77 Norwegians in 2011.

Other events include morning coffee and papers with writers and Herald journalists, late-night salons, writers on writers, "curiosity lectures" on hipsters, capital publishment and Enid Blyton, and non-monogamy.

In her third year as director, Birrell says the festival has come together perfectly, with guests such as Coupland, Walliams, Frayn and Tomalin finally accepting invitations issued when she began.

The full festival program is in Spectrum in Saturday's Herald and at swf.org.au.