The 31st Annual Australasian Association of Writing Programs Conference: Voicing Our World, University of New South Wales, Sydney, 2–4 December 2026.
Hosted by the Literary Provocations Hub at the University of New South Wales Sydney, the 31st Australasian Association of Writing Programs (AAWP) 2026 conference will be held in-person at the UNSW Kensington campus, situated on unceded Bidjigal lands. The conference is a cross-institutional collaboration between UNSW Sydney, Macquarie University, University of Sydney, University of Technology Sydney, and Western Sydney University.
The theme of this year’s conference is Voicing Our World
In our contemporary world, the multifaceted terms, “voices”, “voicing” and their many conjugations and articulations are intertwined with key considerations in our discipline of Creative Writing. First Nations writers have been leading discussions about the real-life consequences of the amplification of some writerly voices and the silencing of others. We hear writers say that they are “giving voice to the voiceless” in their work, a formulation famously critiqued by the writer Arundhati Roy who said “There’s really no such thing as the “voiceless”. There are only the deliberately silenced or the preferably unheard.”[1] Such provocations about voicing, silencing, hearing and their links to power are in productive tension with our discipline of Creative Writing in so many ways. In the process of composition, writers expend labour searching for the right voice through craft-based choices including considerations of form, style, lyricism, prosody, metaphor, symbolism, imagery, character design, narrative design etc while agents, mentors, publishers, scholars, critics and judges of literary awards often frame discussions and make decisions around the uniqueness of the writer’s voice in literary texts. In a narratological sense, questions about the voice of the narrator or character, and the differences from and connections to questions of perspective have helped extend the boundaries of our discipline. In the entanglements between Creative Writing and feminist, queer, postcolonial and disability studies, and ecocriticism, the interrogation of voice is often central to creative and scholarly knowledge-creation, from the advocacy for stronger literary representation of minoritised voices to our ongoing conversations related to the more-than-human. The challenges and possibilities offered by AI have complicated our understanding of voice, demanding new ways to address the key questions of our time as they relate to the work we do as writers and scholars. We invite scholarly and creative contributions that address these ideas directly or in tangential yet fresh ways. Abstracts/Proposals may address, but need not be limited to, the following themes:
- First Nations voices in our world
- The voice of the writer in the public sphere
- Voice, power, representation
- Diverse voices in the writing workshop
- Voices in translation
- Voicing the past, the present, and the future
- Voicing the popular
- Intertextuality and the voices of others in literary work
- Mentoring relationships and voice
- Prize culture and voice
- Creative Writing pedagogy and voice
- Our disciplinary voice in the higher education sector
- Formalist or craft-based conceptions of voice, tone, and/or perspective
- Vocalising the relationship between the human and the more-than-human
- Vocal Aesthetics in literary texts
- Algorithmic composition, SLMs, LLMs, machine automatism and the human voice
- Voice as reflected in form and style (including hybrid forms that disrupt literary conventions and challenge genre classifications)
- Voice as it can emerge in various modes of poetry, and in lyric prose
We welcome abstracts/proposals for individual papers or panels of three to four speakers that speak to our theme as it relates to the discipline of Creative Writing, on creative and professional writing practices and processes, research in creative writing, the teaching of writing and related issues.
- For individual papers: a 350-word abstract + a 100-word bio note
- For panels: a 700-word abstract for the panel, including a brief description of the panel and a 100-word abstract of each paper + a 100-word bio note for each speaker.
Conference website and details about abstract submission coming soon…
[1] Roy, Arundhati, ‘Roy’s full speech’, Sydney Morning Herald, November 4, 2004, https://www.smh.com.au/national/roys-full-speech-20041104-gdk1qn.html
Previous annual conferences of the AAWP have been held at:
1996 University of Technology, Sydney, NSW
1997 Deakin University and RMIT University, Melbourne, VIC
1998 University of South Australia / University of Adelaide, SA
1999 Edith Cowan University, Perth, WA
2000 Griffith University, Gold Coast Campus, QLD
2001 University of Canberra, Canberra, ACT
2002 University of Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC
2003 University of New South Wales, NSW
2004 Flinders University, Adelaide, SA
2005 Curtin University of Technology, Perth, WA
2006 Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, QLD
2007 University of Canberra, Canberra, ATC
2008 University of Technology, Sydney, NSW
2009 Waikato Institute of Technology, Hamilton, New Zealand
2010 RMIT, Melbourne, VIC
2011 Southern Cross University, Byron Bay, NSW
2012 Deakin University, Geelong, VIC
2013 University of Canberra, Canberra, ATC
2014 Massey University, Wellington, New Zealand
2015 Swinburne University, Melbourne, VIC
2016 University of Canberra, Canberra, ATC
2017 Flinders University, Adelaide, SA
2018 Curtin University, Edith Cowan University, Murdoch University and the University of Western Australia, Perth, WA
2019 University of Technology, Sydney, NSW
2020 Griffith University, Gold Coast, QLD
2021 University of the Sunshine Coast, Sunshine Coast, QLD (online symposium in lieu of conference)
2022 Central Queensland University and University of the Sunshine Coast (USC), Sippy Downs, QLD
2023 University of Canberra’s Centre for Creative and Cultural Research, Canberra, ACT
2024 University of New England, Armidale, NSW
2025 University of Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC