Abstracts are being sought for the Sixth Annual South Australian Postgraduate and Early Career Researcher Gender, Sex and Sexualities conference. All applicants whose abstracts are accepted also have the chance to submit a full paper for publication in the special issue of an academic peer-reviewed journal.

Past, Present and Future: contested histories and emerging identities will be held on September 23 and 24 at the Napier Building: Theatre 102, University of Adelaide. It will feature exciting, local and interstate keynote speakers and panellists (TBA).

The submission deadline is June 3, 2019.

‘Standard presentations’ (20 minutes) are eligible for the Dr Michael Noble Prize for Outstanding Contribution to the Conference. The prize is a book voucher, awarded to the best conference presentation, in honour of Dr Michael Noble. We recognise Dr Noble’s life work, including his contributions to intersex activism, his role as Intersex Consultant and Communications Officer for the 2017 Gender, Sex and Sexualities Art(i)culations of Violence Committee, alongside many other achievements and experiences. More information on the Dr Michael Noble Prize to follow. 

The aim of this conference is to bring together postgraduate students and early career researchers from across South Australia to share their work and research with their peers and to continue building a collegial and collaborative environment for South Australian and Australian students. This year’s theme aims to explore the past, present and future of gender, sex and sexualities in relation to the structural, personal, institutional, cultural, symbolic, epistemic, and discursive. This theme is purposefully broad and can be applied to any number of issues, theoretical and practical.

This is an interdisciplinary conference that aims to bring together a network of postgraduate students and early career researchers from across South Australia whose research explores gender and/or sexualities. Previous conferences have featured papers from students of Sociology, Gender & Women’s Studies, Indigenous Studies, Politics, Anthropology, History, Visual Art, Cultural Studies, Creative Writing, Health Science, Law, Philosophy, Linguistics and more. We are excited to bring together a multitude of exciting thinkers across disciplines!

This year’s theme is Past, Present and Future: Contested Histories and Emerging Identities. Possibilities for exploring the concepts of past, present and future include (but are not limited to):

• Post genderism
• Intersectionality
• Activism and privilege
• Diversity and the academy
• Decolonisation
• Performance and storytelling
• Human rights, health and wellbeing
• Family, intimacies, transformation, and marriage
• Childhood and youth
• Environment and sustainability
• Violence
• Power
• Education

We invite three different types of presentation:

• Standard presentation (20 minutes)
• Short ‘snapshot’ paper (5 minutes)
• Visual art (see call for visual art)

Our invited speakers will talk about their exciting research and offer helpful guidance to postgraduate and early career researcher attendees.

Visit our website for more information: https://sagenderandsexualitiesconf.wordpress.com/

Submit your abstract using the relevant proforma and email to: gsspostgradconference@gmail.com

Special issue of the journal Axon: Creative Explorations www.axonjournal.com.au

This special issue of the Axon journal is connected to a one-day symposium to be held in Canberra on 21st October 2019 during the Poetry on the Move Festival (17-21 October 2019), organised and hosted by the International Poetry Studies Institute (IPSI) in the Faculty of Arts and Design at the University of Canberra.

This issue aims to explore ways in which contemporary poetry uses or harnesses knowledge of various kinds and how poetry understands the world. For example, how does poetry make use of, interact with or transform existing bodies of knowledge? And how is poetry itself a form of knowing? If poetry may be said to produce knowledge, what kind of knowledge is this?

We are particularly interested in papers that relate to:

• Poetry’s relationship to various conceptions of truth (social, political, abstract, aesthetic)
• Embodied knowledges
• Cultural knowledge
• The play of convention and subversion
• Poetry’s use of and intersection with knowledge from other intellectual domains (e.g. science, mathematics, philosophy, economics, etc.)
• Poetry’s incorporation of knowledge about the environment, climate and landscape
• Poetic modes of thinking and cognition
• Poetry and the thought-feeling nexus
• Ways in which poetry explores knowledge
• Heuristic knowledge and trial-and-error
• Ways in which poetry produces knowledge
• Poetic revision as a pathway to knowledge
• How poetic expression relates to the production of knowledge
• Poetry and the ephemeral

What we would like from contributors:

1. A 150-word abstract of your proposed paper by 30 April 2018
2. If your abstract is accepted (we will notify you by 20 May 2018), a full written paper of between 3,000 and 6,000 words by 15 November 2018.

The editors of this issue of Axon: Creative Explorations journal are Professor Paul Hetherington, Professor Jen Webb and Shane Strange.

All abstracts, papers and related correspondence should be addressed to Shane Strange at Shane.Strange@canberra.edu.au

The University of Melbourne is seeking a Level E Professor to enrich and advance our program in Creative Writing. The appointee will have expertise and significant publications in areas of Creative Writing practice and scholarship that complement and enhance their Program.

For more details and to apply, click here

Edited by Kate Cantrell, Ariella Van Luyn, Emma Doolan

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines ‘wandering’ as ‘going about from place to place; an aimless, slow, or pointless movement; and a shift away from the proper, normal, or usual course’. Wandering, as both a physical movement and a conceptual metaphor, can transcend the boundaries between past and present, the real and imagined, the centre and the periphery, the virtual and the actual, the human and the non-human, the private and the public, and the finite and the boundless. Wandering, by its nature, signals a shift away from linear modes of operating to a more colourful vista of experimentation, repetition, spontaneity, play, and general misrule. Historically, wanderers have been transgressive subjects who at different times have been both revered and feared, appreciated and misunderstood, and rewarded and punished for their alleged risk-taking, vagrancy, and aimlessness. Like the exile, the wanderer represents the ghost of modernity who is uprooted from home and perpetually displaced in space and time. However, not all experiences of wandering are the same. The experience of a refugee who wanders in search of a safe place to call home is different to the experience of a traveller who elects to wander while on holiday. Therefore, wandering is both an alternative mode of subjectivity and an apt metaphor for different ways of thinking, knowing, and being. Ingrid Horrocks, in her recent book, Women Wanderers and the Writing of Mobility (2017), explains: “To be a wanderer is not quite the same as being a traveller: wandering assumes neither destination nor homecoming. The wanderer’s narrative tends to work by digression and detour rather than by a direct route. Wanderers, and their narratives, are always in danger of becoming lost. A wanderer is also someone who moves from place to place encountering a series of different people, making her a natural vehicle for explorations of sympathy and sociability, social exclusion, and loneliness.” Wandering, as Horrocks notes, is not always voluntary. People with dementia can be prone to wandering, as can children with autism. The expression ‘to have a wandering eye’ is an idiom that highlights the intersection between gendered mobility and morality. In Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1798), wandering is a curse that haunts the Mariner and takes it shape as a longing that he can never satisfy or fulfil. Wandering refuses to assign meaning to a single locus and instead encourages us to consider ideas and practices that are fluid, pluralistic, and intuitive. This special issue on ‘wandering’ will explore current and emerging research on wandering practices and behaviours, methodologies, texts, and technologies.

Areas of investigation may include but are not limited to:

* Wandering and the body

* Wandering and the environment

* Wandering and new/emerging technologies

* Wandering and tourist cultures, images, and identities

* Wandering and migration, immigration, and refugeeism

* Wandering and mobility

* Wandering and diaspora

* Wandering and concepts of home and homelessness

* Wandering and urban spaces

* Wandering and philosophy, including morality

* Wandering and cartography, psychogeography, and affective geography

* Wandering in art, literature, and film

* Wandering in indigenous cultures and contexts

* Wandering in time

* Wandering between genres

* Wandering as a literal, textual, physical, or imaginative phenomenon

* Wandering as a form of protest, resistance, or ‘promiscuous’ behaviour

* Wandering problems and stereotypes

Prospective contributors should email an abstract of 100-250 words and a brief biography to the issue editors. Abstracts should include the article title and should describe your research question, approach, and argument.

Biographies should be about three sentences (maximum 75 words) and should include your institutional affiliation and research interests. Articles should be 3000 words (plus bibliography). All articles will be refereed and must adhere to MLA style (6th edition).

Please send any enquiries to wandering@journal.media-culture.org.au.

Every creative expression shares a vision. Whether writers look away, towards, askance, within or over, they draw readers to peripheries, asking Where from? Why this? How so? Where to?

This special issue of TEXT seeks to publish papers that explicitly investigate peripheral visions of past, present and future, and of figures and forms, fractures and erasures. Papers may tackle, for example, unconventional wisdom, unsettled perspectives, lapsed borders— that which is beyond and outside the accepted or obvious. In this way, alternative worlds, ideas, fictions and verities may emerge, compete, coalesce, fragment, shift …

For more information and how to submit, click here.

All involved with AAWP who knew Judith will be saddened by the passing of a friend, colleague, supportive mentor and fierce advocate for writers and writing.

Judith has been a supporter of writing and writers in so many ways – in creative writing courses across a range of institutions, with PEN both locally and internationally, and on an individual basis guiding emerging writers. She always gave graciously to others, whether it was advice on a poem or help with a launch, and her style and wisdom lit up the many events she attended and organized.

Judith will be much missed, not only for her belief in writing as a creative force for change, but also for her inimitable wit and compassion for others.

PEN International has provided details of Judith’s career as well as further evidence of how much she has contributed to the fabric of our lives in Australia and internationally:

Into the New World: Diaspora in Australian and Scottish Writing

As part of Curtin’s collaboration with the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, a PhD project with scholarship is available for 2019 start.

Students undertaking a collaborative PhD under the alliance are offered a seamless international experience as well as a fully funded scholarship with living stipend. You will spend time at each institution and will be supervised by both Aberdeen and Curtin research staff.

Immigration and Emigration are dominant features of our current global experience but they are foundational to the relationship between Scotland and Australia. Many Scots left Scotland to make a new home in Australia and arrived at the port of Fremantle near Perth and many modern Australians trace their origins to Scotland.

This PhD project invites submissions on the theme of emigration and immigration between Scotland and Australia (whatever the direction of travel) with particular emphasis on diasporic experience. Proposals are welcomed from those wishing to undertake a creative writing project that deals with the historical experience of emigration and immigration between the two countries, or one that considers more recent experience by taking either a fictional or life-writing approach. Proposals from those who wish to take undertake a more literary study exploring existing literary works on the topic of Scottish-Australian diasporic experience will also be welcomed.

Closing date for EOI: 10 January 2019.

For more information, see: https://scholarships.curtin.edu.au/scholarships/scholarship.cfm?id=3646.0

Chapter One is a publication pathway for emerging writers. The prize is open to authors who have written a poetry collection, literary novel, short story collection, or a hybrid work that crosses genre boundaries. The Australasian Association of Writing Programs (AAWP) is delighted to partner with University of Western Australia Publishing (UWAP) to provide this publication pathway for emerging writers. Heartfelt thanks to the judge for managing the judging process with such integrity—thank you for so generously donating your time in the interests of emerging writers.

This year, we have joint winners: A Book of Broken Pieces by Wendy Riley and The Whistler Calls by Greg Woodland.

Since the time of submission, Greg has been offered a contract with TEXT Publishing for The Whistler Calls. Warm congratulations, Greg. Wendy receives a $500 cash prize and both authors are entitled to fully subsidised conference fees, to attend the annual conference of the AAWP (November 2018), where they are invited to read from their work. The University of Western Australia Publishing agrees to assess Wendy’s manuscript as a matter of priority.

Judge’s Report: The Whistler Calls by Greg Woodland

The Whistler Calls (Greg Woodland) is joint-winner of the Chapter One prize in 2018. The submission is very well written, in a forceful and very down-to-earth style, which creates strong literary effects without being ‘literary’ in any precious or laboured sense. The writer offers many memorable images, many vivid descriptions, and the synopsis and first chapter indicate a very strong narrative drive-forward, a determination in the writer to tell a good story, as vividly and authentically as possible. The evocation of the Australian rural environment is very effective indeed, and the writer has superbly matched language, place and people.  I believe this story will find a keen readership both as an adult novel and as ‘young adult’ fiction, and in this latter category, would have a good chance of finding publication. The writer shows a very sure hand and the submission is characterised throughout by powerful language and very strong story-telling skills.

Judge’s Report: A Book of Broken Pieces by Wendy Riley

A Book of Broken Pieces is a short story collection. The short story, ‘Billy and the Sea Eagle’, one of a number of stories submitted by Wendy, characterises the wider range of her work. The story is a challenging exercise in cultural empathy—in moving ‘inside’ the world, the family, the environment of her central characters—and together with the other stories offers a remarkable conversation between cultures, likely to be controversial in some respects, with its bold imaginative incursions into the territory of others, but fulfilling, in doing so, one of the best and bravest ventures of which writing is capable. The writing broaches a series of subjectivities, intimately portrayed. She has a very sure hand—the writing is throughout beautifully crafted, evocative and intimate, and with a strong command of basic storytelling and with an impressive grasp of concrete detail. Her story-telling technique is highly sophisticated, and yet it results in inviting storytelling. One distinctive feature of the writing is that it invites a particularly wide readership, from late childhood through to adult. There is a strong and distinctive blend of fantasy and imagining, together with a very secure sense of physical location. Impressive throughout.

About Wendy Riley:

Raised in the UK, Wendy lives in Melbourne with her husband and son. Trained as a journalist and now working as a content writer, creative writing has always been her passion. Eleven of the twelve stories in her short story compilation A Book of Broken Pieces have now been recognised in national and international literary awards. Wendy also has a novel manuscript waiting in the wings.

About Greg Woodland:

Greg is founder-director of script development service Script Central. He’s been a script developer and consultant for Australian film funding bodies and the Australian Writers Guild for over 20 years. An award-winning writer/director, his films and documentaries have screened nationally and internationally at over 60 film festivals and numerous TV channels. His screenplays The Visitor and Pangs won several script competitions including the Inscription Open Script Award, Fellowship of Australian Writers Best Drama, an Eleanor Dark Flagship Fellowship and two Varuna Fellowships. Greg’s script editing credits include produced feature films: ‘Don’t Tell’ and ‘Broken’, ‘The Bet’, ‘Needle’, ‘Cold Turkey’ and indigenous documentary feature ‘Occupation Native’. He also script edited the 2016 AWG John Hinde Science Fiction Unproduced Script Award winner, the 2013 Tropfest Best Film Winner We’ve All Been There and many others. He’s taught Scriptwriting at UTS, NIDA, and AFTRS. Greg’s rural crime novel ‘The Whistler Called’ will be published in 2019 by TEXT Publishing

It is our very great pleasure to announce the winner of the Australasian Association of Writing Programs / Australian Short Story Festival Emerging Writers’ Prize. The winner is Margaret Hickey for ‘Fowler’s Bay’. AAWP/ASSF are proud to support emerging writers in offering this opportunity for emerging writers.

Highly commended entries (in alphabetical order) include:

• ‘A Name Like For Ever’ by Suzanne Hermanoczki
• ‘Between You and the Stars’ by Nicole Janov
• ‘Cat’s Kiss’ by Alison Thompson
• ‘Pass Muster’ by Deb Wain

AAWP/ASSF would like to thank all authors who submitted to the prize. The judges were overwhelmed by the quality and diversity of entries. This made the judging process very challenging.

AAWP/ASSF would like to acknowledge the generosity of our fine judges. Heartfelt thanks.

Judges’ appraisal:

Margaret Hickey’s ‘Fowler’s Bay’ is a quietly humorous story about poverty, hardship and loss. A story about a woman who was returned to her childhood bay to find that although much has changed she still can’t breathe there because of all the ‘sand blowing down my gullet’. In few words Hickey paints the picture of a life that has floundered, a woman who has lost plenty but who is still ready for life to take new turns. ‘Fowler’s Bay’ is a sad but life-affirming story that stood out in this year’s batch of fine stories.

About Margaret Hickey:

Marg Hickey is a playwright and author living in North East Victoria. Her plays are published with Playlab and have been performed in Melbourne (La Mama), Brisbane, New York and regional Victoria. Marg’s short stories have been shortlisted and won prizes in many awards. This year, her short story Binky won first prize in the Victorian Writers Grace Marion Award and second in the state. She has been published in many newspapers and literary journals including Meanjin.

This year, Marg submitted her PhD on depictions of landscape in contemporary Australian literature. When Marg isn’t writing, she teaches Theatre Studies at a local high school. She lives in the North East with her husband and three sons in a small house surrounded by gums.

 

AAWP/UWRF EMERGING WRITERS’ PRIZE 2018

It is our very great pleasure to announce the winner of the Australasian Association of Writing Programs / Ubud Writers and Readers Festival Emerging Writers’ Prize. The winner is Sophie Overett for ‘Sea Wife’.

Highly commended entries (in alphabetical order) include:

• ‘Forty Seven’ by Elizabeth Cummings
• ‘Feral Street’ by Susan Francis
• ‘Scales’ by Keely Jobe
• ‘Ruby’ by Saman Shad

AAWP/UWRF would like to thank all authors who submitted to the prize. The judges were overwhelmed by the nuanced responses to the theme and the quality and diversity of entries. We are proud to support emerging writers in offering this opportunity for emerging writers.

AAWP/UWRF would like to acknowledge the generosity of our fine judges. Heartfelt thanks.

Judges’ appraisal:

In ‘The Sea Wife’, Sophie Overett turns her attention to myth in order to explore the tragedy of love in a world that inevitably destroys. Suffused with exquisite aquatic imagery that reflects the currents in the main protagonist’s own moods, this richly layered story charts the interplay of life and death, memory and murder, feeling and language. It is an intense and hauntingly atmospheric story.

About Sophie Overett:

Sophie Overett is an Australian writer and cultural producer. Her writing has been published in journals and anthologies around the world. In 2015, she was a Queensland Literary Fellow, and her YA manuscript, Agatha Abel Meets Her Maker, was shortlisted for the Text Prize. In 2016, her adult manuscript, The Rabbits, was shortlisted for The Richell Prize, and in 2018, her novelette, They Built Us Out of Buried Things will be published by Tiny Owl Workshop. She is one half of Lady Parts, a podcast about women’s roles in genre cinema, and blogs at www.sophieoverett.com.

 

 

The University of Queensland Library is excited to announce that we are offering a $25,000 Fellowship for an emerging Australian author to create a new work of creative writing. The successful recipient will be immersed in a higher education setting and receive support from Library staff, the School of Communication and Arts and University of Queensland Press.

The Fellow will use the special collections of the Fryer Library as inspiration to create a novel, play, collection of short stories, book of poems, narrative non-fiction, creative non-fiction, biographical work, novella or associated creative work.

You will also have the opportunity to be mentored by an established Australian writer. Our mentors are Dr Nick Earls, Ross Cark, Sean Williams, Associate Professor Bronwyn Lea, John Birmingham, Matt Condon, Dr Veny Armanno and Dr Jessica White.

As part of the Fellowship you will also have a feedback session with the editorial team of University of Queensland Press.

Applications close on Sunday 30 September. More information is available online.