The Creative Manoeuvres: Making, Saying, Being papers – the refereed proceedings of the 18th Conference of the Australasian Association of Writing Programs, 2013 – are now available under the publications tab.
For the first time, in addition to the academic stream, creative papers have been included in the proceedings. These represent ‘a surprising and diverse body of works that shows dexterity in relation to what creative writing is, and can be,’ according to Shane Strange and Kay Rozynski in their editorial introduction. However, all delegates address ‘the multiform ways that writing and writers make and understand through creative and academic practice’.
Strange and Rozynski also assert that ‘[t]he emphasis on movement, on ‘manoeuvring’, is an important one in a space that has at times valued practice as an object rather than as a movement of making, doing, thinking and being’. They add that what became clear in reviewing the nearly fifty papers presented is that ‘thinking about writing and its place in the world (and the university) is bearing the fruit of broad, interdisciplinary endeavour – which has always been the promise of the translation of creative practice into the academy.’ Thus, these proceedings ‘are evidence that in 2013 there was good reason to be excited about writing as a mode of knowledge, practice and research’.