Conference dinner ticket sales close at midnight tonight! Remember that all dietary requirements must be received at the time of booking. See the conference website for more information

The upcoming AAWP Annual General Meeting, to be held during the conference in Melbourne.

Venue: Room AMDC 301, Swinburne University, Melbourne, Australia
Date/time: Tuesday, 1 December, 2015, 12–1pm.
During this time nominations and elections for the Executive Committee of Management will be conducted. If you wish to nominate a member of the AAWP for a place on the Committee, please email jvicars@une.edu.au ASAP.

The draft agenda can be found here. We look forward to seeing you at the conference.
AAWP Executive Committee of Management

The Australasian Association of Writing Programs wishes to acknowledge those who have generously supported our annual conference ‘Writing the Ghost Train | Rewriting, Remaking, Rediscovering’.

The following literary publications provided generous donations of books, literary magazines and annual subscriptions:

Griffith Review, Island, The Lifted Brow, Meanjin, Overland, Review of Australian Fiction, Southerly, Westerly.

The AAWP is extremely grateful for this support.

Minding the Gap: Writing across Thresholds and Fault Lines is a selection of papers from the AAWP’s 19th Annual Conference in Wellington, which was recently published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. The AAWP would like to congratulate Thom Conroy and Gail Pittaway for their stellar work in editing this collection.

The book includes chapters on writing non–fiction, media and genre, and also addresses elements of identity, culture and linguistics in fiction, poetry and creative non-fiction as contributors consider the gaps that exist between the self as writer, as reader and as editor or mentor.

To order your copy, visit the Cambridge Scholars website

NAWE is hosting a new meeting for Creative Writing PhD students and here is the relevant information:

Only Connect: NAWE Creative Writing PhD Networking Event

Saturday 5 December 2015, 2 to 4.30pm

The Keynes Library, School of Arts,

Birkbeck, University of London

43 Gordon Square

London WC1H 0PD

Presented by NAWE in association with Birkbeck, University of London

Studying for a Creative Writing PhD? Interested in meeting up with other PhD students and exploring the idea of setting up a PhD Network (including online)?

NAWE (National Association for Writers in Education) has teamed up with the School of Arts at Birkbeck, University of London to run this afternoon networking event. It’s a fantastic opportunity to help shape this brand new initiative and take it forward.

Facilitators: Anne Caldwell, Deputy Director, NAWE and Philippa Holloway, PhD Graduate Teaching Assistant, Edge Hill University. Host: Julia Bell, Course Convenor, MA Creative Writing, Birkbeck, University of London

Cost: £5 donation (towards costs) To book a place contact p.johnston@nawe.co.uk

Editor: Dr. Dallas J. Baker

This special issue of Meniscus will focus on writing from the other side of divides, geographical, political, linguistic or cultural. Writing from the Australian interior—, on the other side of the Great Dividing Range—and from the other side of borders or geographical barriers (ranges/seas) in other nations , is particularly welcomed. This special issue also seeks work from regional, rural and remote writers, writers either living or originating from places beyond the capital cities and key centres of their nation or region. East Coast strip that encompasses Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane. Writing from regional, rural and remote writers are encouraged. Writers from cities beyond the divide (Canberra, Darwin and Perth etc.) are also welcome to submit. The issue is interested in receiving work from writers on the other side of borders or geographical barriers (ranges/seas) from larger or more dominant regions or nations. Writers from Tasmania, New Zealand, Canada, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales and Hong Kong would all meet this criteria.

For more information, see the journal’s website

‘Chapter One’ is the Australasian Association of Writing Programs (AAWP) 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 AAWP is delighted to provide this publication pathway for emerging writers.

The judging process relies on the generous support of established writers within the AAWP. In this inaugural year, the exceptional quality of submissions placed the judges in an unenviable position. Thank you to all writers who submitted their work for consideration. Submissions were received locally and internationally. We welcomed submissions from existing members of the AAWP and were thrilled to accept submissions from new members.

The inaugural winner of the ‘Chapter One’ prize is Luke Johnson for his submission: Stories from an Other Place. Luke will receive a written appraisal of his work from an established literary author within the AAWP, together with a letter of recommendation to the University of Western Australia Publishing (UWAP). This ‘tick of approval’ will see Luke’s manuscript assessed without delay. Luke will, effectively, leap to the top of the submissions pile. In addition, Luke receives a $500 cash prize and fully subsidised conference fees to attend the annual conference of the AAWP (November 2015), where he is invited to read from his work.

We are thrilled to fast track Luke’s writing journey. Please join us in warmly congratulating Luke.

We look forward to receiving your submissions for the 2016 ‘Chapter One’ prize. As the competition was very tightly contested, we encourage submission in consecutive years.

We look forward to seeing you all at the AAWP conference (Melbourne 2015). Details here:

Luke Johnson— Author bio:

Luke Johnson’s stories have appeared in such places as Overland, Island, HEAT, Mascara Literary Review, The Lifted Brow, Going Down Swinging and TEXT, as well as being listed for such awards as the Josephine Ulrick Prize and Elizabeth Jolley Prize. He has written for The Age, The Drum and Australian Book Review, and has had scholarly research accepted for publication in such journals as Texas Studies in Literature and Language. He teaches Creative Writing at the University of Wollongong and University of Technology Sydney, where he completed a PhD in Creative Writing and Psychoanalytic Literary Theory in 2013.