If your university has a course related to creative writing, please check the details on our course listings page.

The Australasian Association of Writing Programs exists to provide a forum for discussion on all aspects of teaching creative and professional writing as well as current theories on creativity and writing, and to improve the quality of programs across Australasia. Our website introduces visitors to the Association, and provides information on writing courses, competitions, conferences and other relevant material, so it’s important that universities keep their listings up to date.

Send any new details or updates to Jessie Seymour at info@aawp.org.au

The University of New South Wales is hosting the Association for the Study of Australian Literature annual conference, 6-9 July 2016. This Association for the Study of Australian Literature promotes the study, discussion and creation of Australian writing. It also seeks to increase awareness of Australian writing in the wider community and throughout the world. ASAL holds conferences and maintains a directory of postgraduate research on this website.

Confirmed keynote speakers include Melissa Lucashenko, Lyn McCredden and Chadwick Allen. The conference will feature two panels of writers: a panel of local indigenous writers and a panel bringing writers from around the country.

For more details, visit UNSW’s website or the Association for the Study of Australian Literature’s website.

The Stella Prize and Writers Victoria invite members of the writing community to contribute to the upcoming Stella Diversity Survey at this open forum discussion. This will be an opportunity to help shape the survey by sharing and discussing any thoughts, feedback, concerns or questions.

The event is on Thursday 17 March 2016 – 5:00pm to 8:00pm, at The Wheeler Centre in Melbourne. This public forum is free, but attendees are requested to register on the website. Babies and children are welcome.

NAWE’s new Journal of Creative Writing Research, Writing in Practice, is a peer-reviewed journal that aims to explore the nature of the art of writing, highlighting current academic thinking and practice, and reflecting on this with an international outlook. The second volume, featuring writing from AAWP members Craig Batty, Tony McMahon, Karina Quinn, and James Vicars, is now live! Check out their website for more details.

The Call for Papers for Volume 3, is also available here.

This issue of TEXT is an invitation for writers, scholars, and creative practitioners to think through the implications of the essay as an evolving contemporary genre in Australasia. While we presume a focus on contemporary literature and national context, given the recent popularity of the essay here, we also welcome contributions that gauge and reflect on the genre as it has developed historically, or that trace its inflections in international contexts of relevance to Australasian stories and voices.

For more information on possible topics and how to submit, see the full Call for Papers.

We can confirm that the proceedings, both the critical and creative papers, will be publishing on or before March 1, 2016. We can’t wait to share all of these thought-provoking papers with you, and we would like to thank the editors, Eugen Bacon, Dominique Hecq and Amelia Walker for all of their hard work.

Watch this space

We are currently inviting abstracts and expressions of interest for our 21st Annual Conference, hosted by the University of Canberra. The conference is themed ‘Authorised Theft’, and will explore the processes of making creative works in writing. This conference will showcase creative works and highlight creative modes of writing; it will enable investigations of how we make and say; and it will provide opportunities to explore how creative writers engage with research.

Papers are invited in four streams:

1. a refereed scholarly stream (a work of scholarship on or about creative practice, intended for inclusion in the published conference proceedings);
2. a refereed creative stream (a creative work accompanied by a scholarly research statement, intended for inclusion in the published conference proceedings);
3. a general (non-refereed) scholarly stream; and
4. a general (non-refereed) creative stream; this should incorporate a scholarly framework that will be presented along with the creative element.

For full details and relevant due dates, visit the conference page

Forgotten Lives/Biographies

@ University Of Southern Queensland (Toowoomba) in April 2016

The aim of the symposium is to encourage research, innovation and collaboration by bringing together academics within and outside the University of Southern Queensland whose research focuses on historic figures who have been largely neglected by history and/or forgotten over time. Academics and HDR students working in this or related theoretical, methodological or research areas are encouraged to attend.

Professor Donna Lee Brien is a highly-esteemed senior researcher in the discipline of Creative Writing, particularly non-fiction writing, with an interdisciplinary research practice intersecting with a number of other research areas including food studies, gothic studies and popular culture.

Professor Brien will deliver a keynote address entitled Australian Speculative Biography: Recovering Forgotten Lives.

The symposium will lead to a publication (a book and/or journal issue). Papers presented at the seminar will be considered as chapters for the publication and/or the special journal issue.

The date for the symposium is: Thursday 28th April 2016

The program for the symposium is:

10am to 11am – Keynote address by Professor Donna Lee Brien

Session 1 – 11:30 to 1:00pm

Session 2 – 1:30 to 3pm

Session 3 – 3:30pm to 5:00pm.

If you are interested in presenting a paper please email a brief abstract (250 words max) and a biography of no more than 150 words by March 15^th 2016 to:dallas.baker@usq.edu.au

Please also nominate the session time that suits you.

This special issue of TEXT takes the opportunity of the 400th anniversary of William Shakespeare’s death to explore the nexus between Creative Writing and Shakespeare Studies, in particular the ways that Shakespeare and his work are being studied and applied in the context of the practice and pedagogy of creative writing (broadly defined). For more information and how to submit, see the Call for Papers

AAWP is proud to team up with the UBUD Writers and Readers Festival to launch the Emerging Writers’ Prize!

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