Please submit to our dazzling suite of prizes, as listed below.

Head to our Prizes page here to enter.

Abstracts are invited for this online workshop on creative nonfiction as it is practised in Australasia.

Guest speakers on the day are the award-winning writer Behrouz Boochani, author of No Friend but the Mountain, and his translator Omid Tofighian.

Participants are invited to explore uniquely Australasian research, practice and pedagogy regarding creative nonfiction. Investigations into diverse manifestations of this form are welcome, ranging across a broad spectrum from life writing/memoir to experimental histories and narrative journalism.

Possible topics include but are not limited to:

* Environment/s

* Experiments

* Ethics, empathy, and change

* Speaking truth to power

* Immersive experiences and the eye-witness

* Subjectivities

* Aesthetics

* Life writing

* Multiplicities

* Cultural, social and political diversity

* Tracing histories

* Imagination

* Fact and/or fiction

* Social Justice

One aim of the workshop is to develop individual and collaborative written work.  People accepted to participate are asked to submit a 1000-word short paper by 31 August to be circulated ahead of the workshop for discussion on the day. 

We anticipate that there will be at least one publication emerging from the workshop, a special issue of the journal Literary Journalism Studies which will be devoted to Australian work in the field, to be published in 2023.

If you would like to attend, please submit an abstract of 300-500 words, plus a short bio of less than 150 words by 31 Mayto willa.mcdonald@mq.edu.au with the subject line “Creative Nonfiction Writing Workshop”.

The AAWP’s 26th Annual Conference will be held from November 24 – 26, 2021. 

The deadline for the Call for Paper Abstracts has been extended until May 4, 11:59PM (AEST).

The theme for this year’s conference is ‘Fire Country’.Hosted by the University of the Sunshine Coast and Central Queensland University, the conference will take place at Sippy Downs, USC’s Sunshine Coast campus, situated on the unceded lands of its traditional owners, the Gubbi Gubbi people.

For more information, please see the Conference webpage here.

AAWP colleagues co-wrote a critical review of the Stella Prize shortlist for The Conversation.

The outcome of that prize will be announced later today.

Read the full review (and maybe get your next reading recommendations) here.

The Incompleteness Book II—Writing Back and Thinking Forward

Deadline Extended to 4 May 2021

Dear all,

Thank you to those who have already submitted to The Incompleteness Book II. It has been such a pleasure to receive submissions from those who submitted in 2020, as well as new voices.

Thanks, too, to those of you who have let us know that you’d like to contribute but are feeling “underwater”. On that basis we are extending the deadline to 4 May 2021 (11:59PM AEST).

Writing forward and/or thinking back: what do you make of the in/completeness, one year on?

Perhaps you write in great weariness … So be it. We welcome your submissions.

Please note that this opportunity is open only to current AAWP members. You will be prompted to provide membership details, when you submit via the following link:

https://meniscusliteraryjournal.submittable.com/submit/164256/the-in-completeness-book-v2-0

For inquiries re. the status of your membership please contact: memberships@aawp.org.au

If the membership fee presents an issue, please contact Julia: jprendergast@swin.edu.au

Please note that international contributors should pay the international affiliate membership fee (a reduced fee for international colleagues who would like to participate in AAWP initiatives but are less likely to attend AAWP conferences, regularly).

Write boldly. Go gently.

Julia.

Dr Julia Prendergast
Chair of the Executive Committee
Australasian Association of Writing Programs: AAWP
AAWP Portfolio: Partnerships and Prizes

Senior Lecturer, Writing and Literature
Major Discipline Coordinator: Professional Writing and Editing
Swinburne University

In partnership:
Central Queensland University and University of the Sunshine Coast
USC Sunshine Coast Campus, Sippy Downs

24-26 November 2021

THEME: Fire Country

We invite presentations – 15 minutes in duration – from practice, research, industry and pedagogy – and pre-formed collaborative discussion panels (three panellists only) that reflect consideration of a ‘fire country’ and the ways we enable and disseminate those marginal and mainstream voices that contribute to its discourse.

See the full CFP here for more on this year’s theme.

Deadline for abstract submissions is 16 April 2021. This deadline is final.

These should include your name, abstract (200 – 250 words max), university affiliation, e-mail address, the title of your proposed paper, and a short bio (100 words max). Only AAWP members are eligible to present.

You can find membership details, prices, and online sign-up options here.

Professional development sessions for postgraduate candidates and ECR colleagues will be offered in association with the main conference program.

Queries to: AAWP Conference aawpconf2021@gmail.com. The 2021 conference website to submit abstracts and proposals (200-250 words max) can be found here

Conference Committee:
Dr Elizabeth Ellison; Dr Lee McGowan; Dr Nicole Anae; Dr Ross Watkins; Dr Eileen HerbertGoodall; Tash Turgoose; Ali Hickling; Amanda Fiedler; and Lonnie Gilroy

The Incompleteness Book II—Writing Back and Thinking Forward

Deadline: Wednesday 15 April 11.59pm 2021 (EST)

Dear all,

In April 2020, amidst the global pandemic of Covid-19, the Australasian Association of Writing Programs (AAWP), the peak academic body representing the discipline of Creative Writing in Australasia, sent a call for contributions to a Special Issue of TEXT—Journal of Writing and Writing Courses. The theme of the Special Issue was: The in/completeness of human experience. The collection was subsequently published as The Incompleteness Book (2020: Recent Work Press).

We are delighted to announce that Shane Strange, Publisher at Recent Work Press, will publish a follow-up collection: The Incompleteness Book II—Writing Back and Thinking Forward (eds. Eileen Herbert Goodall, Julia Prendergast and Jen Webb).

We invite contributions to this theme, broadly interpreted. We are deeply interested in capturing a composite “picture” of what people make of the prompt: the incompleteness of human experience, one year on. Writing back and thinking forward, we encourage you to consider: What have you discarded? What do you covet more closely than ever? Have we learned something about ourselves or more broadly? Where to, from here?

Please send creative work—short-short fiction, “sudden” fiction, “sketchy” stories, creative nonfiction, poetry, short pithy scripts, as well as hybrid forms. We are accepting submissions on the following scale: up to 400 words prose (including submissions in script format), 40 lines for poetry (approximately 200 words for prose poems), and the equivalent for hybrid forms. Submissions must be previously unpublished. We will accept a maximum of two submissions, per author. Please send your most polished work, without delay. The aim is to capture the immediacy of people’s “thinking positions” in the form of “sudden” writing. The call closes on Wednesday 15 April 2021, 11.59pm (EST).

Please note that this opportunity is open only to current AAWP members. You will be prompted to provide membership details, when you submit:

https://meniscusliteraryjournal.submittable.com/submit/164256/the-in-completeness-book-v2-0

• For inquiries re. the status of your membership please contact: memberships@aawp.org.au
• If the membership fee presents an issue, please contact Julia: jprendergast@swin.edu.au
• Please note that international contributors should pay the international affiliate membership fee (a reduced fee for international colleagues who would like to participate in AAWP initiatives but are less likely to attend AAWP conferences, regularly).

Write boldly. Go gently. In solidarity.

Julia.

The #AWP21 Virtual Conference & Bookfair is just weeks away and we are so excited to bring over 250 events to you, right in the comfort and safety of your own home. Check out this sneak peek to see more of what #AWP21 has to offer and register now!

Link: https://youtu.be/lkXtIQ1BGdk

Poetry as speculation: Axon 11.1 (June) 2021

Ends on May 24, 2021

Please DO NOT submit poems to this issue

This issue of the Axon journal investigates ways in which contemporary poetry speculates about the world, modes of being, reality, creativity, writing itself and ways of understanding the quotidian. We are NOT looking for poems or poetic forms of speculative fiction. Please submit academic papers that explore and relate to:

• ways in which poetic expression and form may be said to speculate;

• how poetry conjectures about the nature of reality and/or being;

• ways in which poetry posits that certain things or situations are the case, even when this may not be literally true;

• how poetry makes use of the fantastic or invokes ideas of wonder;

• how poetry critiques common sense assumptions through invoking or suggesting alternatives;

• how poetry hypothesises about ‘alternative realities’;

• how poetry constitutes a form of conjecture or postulation;

• ways in which poetry engages in imaginative forms of theorisation;

• poetry as surmise;

• poetry as a way of thinking ahead;

• poetry’s employment of unlikely notions and ideas;

• poetry as a form of surmise.

What we would like from contributors:

1. A 150-word abstract of your proposed paper by Monday 8 February 2021.

2. If your abstract is accepted (we will notify you by Friday 22 February 2021), a full written paper of between 3,000 and 6,000 words should be submitted by Monday 24 May 2021.

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

To reward postgraduate academic practice excellence, the AAWP Executive this year reinstated two prizes for the best postgraduate papers presented at conference – one for a scholarly research presentation and one for a creative/hybrid research presentation. To learn more about the results, head to our prizes page here.