Save the dates for AAWP’s 2024 conference at the University of New England, Armidale (NSW).
The 28th annual conference of the Australasian Association of Writing Programs was hosted by the University of Canberra’s Centre for Creative and Cultural Research.
When: Wednesday 29 November to Friday 1 December 2023.
The event was held on Ngunnawal Country; we acknowledge with gratitude that we were welcomed to walk on this unceded land, and pay our respects to their elders, past and present.
Theme: We need to talk.
The conference website (still under construction) includes the link for registration, information about the conference and about Canberra, and some accommodation options (still being expanded).
The conference program included an “un-dinner”. This involved a trip to Canberra Contemporary Art Space on the banks of Lake Burley Griffin in the Parliamentary Triangle. Instead of dinner, there was an exhibition viewing, readings, and wine and nibbles, and the opportunity to purchase meals from vendors operating nearby.
We invited proposals for conference papers, panels, or performances that focused on issues that demand personal, social and institutional attention; and we were very interested in proposals that are collaborative, dialogic, improvisational, and/or performative.
The following list was provided as starter-topics:
Orality – e.g.
- Spoken word forms
- Writing/improvising for performance
- Song / chant
- Script/screenplay
- Audio and transdisciplinary storytelling modes
- Yarning Circles
- Podcasts
Poetry – e.g.
- Performance poetry
- Transformative practice
- Collaborative work
- Ecopoetry
- Poetry of resistance
Essay – e.g.
- Intimacy
- Lyrical or dialogic essay
- Writing as conversation, or collaboration
- Reading as intimacy
- Manifesto / diatribe / rant
Sustainability – e.g.
- The environment and living in the more-than-human world
- Traditional ways of knowing, being and storying
- Economic and political engagement in writing/by writers
- Object writing
- Alternate knowledge systems
- Umwelt
Queering Writing – e.g.
- Decentred and diverse voices
- Indigenous stories
- Neglected art forms
- Queering forms
- AI / Chat GPT – implications, limitations, possibilities
- Gatekeeping
Arts/Health – e.g.
- Writing, reading, and wellbeing
- Transdisciplinary practice for health
- Creative interventions and trauma
- Working beyond the academy (outreach, communicating research)
- Silences in academia
- Care for the author
(or other topics, though we do ask that you aim to accommodate the theme of the conference in your work)
NB: while everyone is welcome to attend the conference, only current AAWP members are eligible to present. You can find membership details, prices, and online sign-up options here.