Call for Abstracts | We Need to Talk: The 28th Annual Conference of the AAWP

The deadline for submission of abstracts is 28 July 2023, 11:59PM (AEST). 

Submit your abstract

The 28th annual conference of the Australasian Association of Writing Programs is hosted by the University of Canberra’s Centre for Creative and Cultural Research. 

The event will be held on Ngunnawal Country; we acknowledge with gratitude that we have been welcomed to walk on this unceded land, and pay our respects to their elders, past and present, and emerging.  

We invite proposals for conference papers, panels, or performances that focus on issues that demand personal, social and institutional attention; and we are very interested in proposals that are collaborative, dialogic, improvisational, and/or performative.  

Please consider the following list of starter-topic areas as you construct your abstract/proposal:  

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 conversatio, 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)

The deadline for submission of abstracts is 28 July 2023, 11:59PM (AEST). 
Proposals should include: 

  • your name
  • your university or other institutional affiliation 
  • your e-mail address  
  • the title of your proposed paper 
  • your abstract (250 words max) 
  • identify whether it is for a paper, a panel, or a performance
  • a short bio (100 words max).  
Submit your abstract

Please submit your queries to jen.webb@canberra.edu.au.

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. 

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About Sarah Giles

Sarah Giles (she/her) is a PhD candidate at Swinburne University researching the possibilities of the contemporary short story cycle exploring women’s experiences of isolation, trauma and mental illness. Her writing has been published in The Writing Mind: Creative Writing Responses to Images of the Living Brain, ACE III and ACE IV (Arresting Contemporary stories by Emerging Writers), The Incompleteness Book, TEXT Journal among others. Sarah works at Writers Victoria as Marketing and Memberships Officer and is a sessional tutor across multiple universities.