February 2010: The Asia-Pacific Writing Partnership, an initiative at The University of Adelaide’s Creative Writing Program, brought together writers from Australia, Asia and beyond for a symposium called ‘Writing Across Cultures’, co-organised and hosted by the City University of Hong Kong (9-10 March, 2010). Speakers included Kim Cheng Boey (University of Newcastle), Brian Castro (The University of Adelaide), Catherine Cole (RMIT University), Andrew Cowan (Director of the MA in Creative Writing, University of East Anglia, UK), Dai Fan (Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China), Robin Hemley (Director of the Nonfiction Writing Program, The University of Iowa, USA), Jose Dalisay (Director of the Institute of Creative Writing, University of the Philippines), Ouyang Yu (Chinese-Australian writer and translator) and Nury Vittachi (City Polytechnic University, Hong Kong). (For full list see: http://apwriters.org/writing-across-cultures/biographies/). Universities funding participants included De La Salle University (Philippines), The Far Eastern University (Philippines), Flinders University (Australia), Keio University (Japan), La Trobe University (Australia), Murdoch University (Australia), RMIT University (Australia), Sekolah Tinggi Bahasa Asing LIA Jakarta (Indonesia), Seoul Foreign School (Korea), Thammasat University (Thailand), Universiti Brunei Darussalam (Brunei), University of East Anglia (UK), University of Jammu (Jammu & Kashmir, India), University of Malaya (Kuala Lumpur), University of Western Australia (Australia),, University of Wollongong(Australia),, and Yunlin University of Science and Technology (Taiwan). (Full list at: http://apwriters.org/writing-across-cultures/sponsors/). Those who participated included a number of literary scholars who hope to set up writing programs in universities in Asia. Others included journalists, ‘aspiring novelists’, editors, and high school teachers. (See: http://apwriters.org/writing-across-cultures/2824/). Apart from the keynote speeches, the main sessions were interactive ‘roundtables’ at which invited speakers acted as ‘provocateurs’ to encourage discussion about ‘Teaching Creative Writing in the Academy’ and ‘Teaching Creative Writing in Asia’. Other sessions featured feature selected writers who spoke about aspects of their craft illustrated by readings. The Asia-Pacific Writing Partnership’s next activity will be a panel at the 2010 conference of the Australian Association of Writing Programs. Jane Camens Asia-Pacific Writing Partnership, Creative Writing/English, School of Humanities, Napier Building, University of Adelaide, SA 5005, Phone: +61 (0)2 66804906, Mobile: +61 (0)437873930