Showing all posts about events
SXSW Sydney cancels 2026 event, leaves Australia
15 January 2026
Eleanor Dickinson, writing for Mumbrella:
South by Southwest (SXSW) has cancelled its Sydney event — which has been held just three times — citing a “changing global environment that is impacting major events, festivals and cultural programs worldwide”.
Purely anecdotal, but one or two of the tech people on my social feeds, who attend such events, had described SXSW Sydney speaker lineups as “not too inspiring”, or words to that effect.
Despite this — from what I can gather — attendances at the past three Sydney events were not disappointing. The cancellation however seems tied to factors other than speaker lineups, and attendances though, with cost being one of them.
I wouldn’t have minded going to SXSW, but I would have preferred that be in Austin, in the US state of Texas, where the festival originated in 1987.
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events, film, music, technology
Adelaide Writers’ Week on the brink following author boycotts
13 January 2026
Hannah Story, writing for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC):
Authors including Miles Franklin winners Michelle de Kretser and Melissa Lucashenko will boycott Adelaide Writers’ Week (AWW) to protest the cancellation of an event featuring Palestinian Australian author, lawyer and activist Randa Abdel-Fattah. Other authors who have withdrawn from the festival include Peter Greste, Yanis Varoufakis, Evelyn Araluen, Amy McQuire, Clare Wright, Chelsea Watego, Bernadette Brennan and Amy Remeikis.
The boycott is in response to the removal of Palestinian Australian author Randa Abdel-Fattah from the 2026 event, scheduled to start at the end of February.
Organisers felt Abdel-Fattah’s presence would “not be culturally sensitive” in the wake of last December’s mass shooting at Sydney’s Bondi Beach, which targeted the Jewish community.
Although organisers say Abdel-Fattah’s writing played no part whatsoever in the atrocity, they were concerned by her long standing anti-Israel sentiments.
Abdel-Fattah has asked organisers to reinstate her, while more writers are threatening to withdraw from the event if this does not happen.
Update: Adelaide Writers’ Week (AWW) 2026 event has been cancelled. The Adelaide Festival, of which AAW is a part, will however still run.
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Australia, Australian literature, current affairs, events, writers
The Sydney Science Fiction Film Festival, 3-5 October 2025
20 September 2025
Running since 2020 I believe, this year’s Sydney Science Fiction Film Festival is on from Friday 3 October until Sunday 5 October 2025, at Event Cinemas, on George Street, in Sydney’s CBD. Eleven features will be screened, with many having their Australian premieres.
One title, The Eagle Obsession, trailer, a documentary directed by American filmmaker Jeffrey Morris, will have its international premiere at the festival.
Also known as The Eagle has Landed, the film explores travel to the Moon, both actual and imagined. William Shatner is among those appearing in the film, along with Barbara Bain and Nick Tate, who starred in 1970’s sci-fi TV series, Space 1999. Now I get the eagle reference…
The Sydney Science Fiction Film Festival Awards ceremony also takes place on the closing evening.
The spectacular banner for this year’s festival, as seen above, which is a futuristic representation of the skyline of Sydney’s CBD — spot the iconic Westfield Tower towards the left — was created by Australian filmmaker and artist Joshua Reed.
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Australia, Barbara Bain, events, film, Jeffrey Morris, Nick Tate, science fiction, Sydney, William Shatner
Sydney Writers’ Festival goes all year round at State Library of NSW
31 July 2025
Sydney Writers’ Festival is teaming up with the State Library of NSW to host literary events throughout the year. This in addition, no doubt, to the main festival event held annually.
The partnership will create a dedicated literature hub in Sydney, providing a dynamic, year-round home for storytelling. It will boost participation in literary events, embed reading and writing into Sydney’s cultural identity, and deliver a diverse program of events, workshops and readings.
There could be in the order of eighty events taking place at the State Library each year. Hopefully the initiative will be a shot in the arm for Australian literature, at a time when both remuneration rates for writers, and recreational reading, are in decline.
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Australian literature, events, literature, reading, writing
The 2025 Global Book Crawl on at indie Australian bookshops this week
22 April 2025
The Global Book Crawl began yesterday, and numerous independent bookshops in Australia are taking part. The book crawl, which has been running for several years, aims to get book lovers across the world, into indie book stores.
In Australia, if crawlers collect enough stamps in a crawl “passport”, they might go on to win a collection of fifty books. Other participating nations include Argentina, Austria, Fiji, Guatemala, Ireland (quite a lot towns involved there), Kyrgyzstan, Malaysia, and Switzerland.
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The Inner West Film Fest part three, scary clowns, road trips, and other films
27 March 2025
The Inner West Film Fest returns for its third outing, between Wednesday 9 April to Thursday 17 April 2025. The inner west — for readers outside of Australia, and that’s a fair few you — is a group of suburbs to the west of downtown Sydney, not too close in, but not too far out either. Newtown, Leichhardt, Balmain, and Marrickville, are among the suburbs in Sydney’s inner west.
Flat Girls by Jirassaya Wongsutin, Who by Fire by Philippe Lesage, and The King Tide by Christian Sparkes, are but a few of the titles screening. Check out the festival trailer for the vibe.
The mysterious death of a young woman’s uncle triggers family turmoil in On Becoming a Guinea Fowl, trailer, by Zambian-Welsh director Rungano Nyoni. The title screened at the Melbourne International Film Festival in 2024, but isn’t in theatrical release in Australia, as far as I can see, so check the streaming services.
Deux personnes échangeant de la salive (Two People Exchanging Saliva) a short by Natalie Musteata and Alexandre Singh, is set in a repressive world where kissing is illegal. Don’t snigger: it might happen. Luàna Bajrami, who featured in Portrait of a Lady on Fire (presently stream-able on Kanopy, by the way), stars as Malaise. See the teaser here (Instagram link).
With or Without You, trailer, by Kelly Schilling, an Adelaide, Australia based filmmaker, is a road trip story about three people, at odds with each other, forced to drive together across Australia. With or Without You opens in local cinemas on Thursday 8 May 2025.
Why do clowns and horror stories go together so well? I have no idea. But if you like horror movies featuring sinister clowns, then Clown in a Cornfield, trailer, directed by Eli Craig, might be for you. Also opens in Australian cinemas on Thursday 8 May 2025.
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Eli Craig, events, film, Kelly Schilling, Luàna Bajrami, Rungano Nyoni
The Sydney Writers’ Festival 2025 program has been published
19 March 2025
This year’s festival has events running from Sunday 18 May through to Wednesday 11 June 2025, though I understand the main event goes from Monday 19 May to Sunday 25 May. There’s too many highlights to list separately, but a few events caught my eye.
The evening of Monday 19 May sees the naming of the winners of the NSW Literary Awards, previously the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards — I can’t find an official announcement of the name change — so NSW Literary Awards it is.
Charlotte Wood, author of Stone Yard Devotional speaks on Tuesday 20 May. Toby Walsh, Chief Scientist of UNSW AI will discuss the six ideas you need to understand AI, on Thursday 22 May.
Friday 23 May is busy. Marcel Dirsus’ talks about the rise and fall of tyrants. Topical, or what. Helen Garner discusses her popular sports-themed memoir The Season. And Shankari Chandran, winner of the 2023 Miles Franklin Award, speaks about the power of literature in sorting fact from fiction in the face of authoritarianism.
Saturday 24 May is a big day. Robbie Arnott (Instagram link) talks about his latest novel Dusk. Michelle Brasier, Virginia Gay, and Chloe Elisabeth Wilson, discuss building writing communities. And the winners of Sydney Morning Herald Best Young Novelist award, will speak to Melanie Kembrey.
Sunday 25 May is another big one. Charlotte Wood, and Irish author Colm Tóibín, also immediate past Laureate for Irish Fiction, discuss Irish literature versus Australian writing. In case you don’t know, Irish literature is smashing the ball out of the park. Annabel Crabb is joined by Jessie Tu (Instagram link), to talk about her latest novel, The Honeyeater.
On Sunday evening, Anna Funder will deliver the festival’s closing address. As I say, this is but a small sample of what’s happening, so check out the program for the full story.
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Australian literature, events, Sydney
NaNoWriMo, NaBloPoMo, and WeblogPoMo AMA, November hots up
4 November 2024
National Novel Writing Month AKA NaNoWriMo, is on this month, for better or worse.
But if you’re a writer seeking distractions from various November happenings — I’m referring more to northern hemisphere inhabitants facing the onset of winter — and don’t want to write a novel, there are other options.
National Blog Posting Month AKA NaBloPoMo, is a write-a-blog-post-each-day challenge, similar to Weblog Posting Month AKA WeblogPoMo, which ran back in May. NaBloPoMo was established in 2006, and for reasons I cannot fathom, have only found out about it now. A list of this year’s NaBloPoMo participants can be seen here.
Back to WeblogPoMo. While not holding another blog-post-a-day challenge this month, something called WeblogPoMo AMA is on instead. Here’s how organiser Anne Sturdivant, sees it working:
For this challenge I want to foster writer interaction: write a blog post starting with a question — the AMA — and then answer the question yourself in the blog post. Others will likewise write AMA/question posts, but also answer the AMA/questions from other bloggers, linking to their initial post.
I write here most days, but don’t know if I could do so every last day of the month. I think NaBloPoMo and WeblogPoMo are cool with people missing a day here or there, but it’s still a pretty big ask. WeblogPoMo AMA, on the other hand, seems like the sort of thing you can jump in and out of, as and when you’re able to.
If you’re taking part in any of these events though, all the best.
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Authors slam NaNoWriMo neither for nor against AI stance
9 September 2024
National Novel Writing Month, AKA NaNoWriMo, the popular, twenty-five year old, write a fifty-thousand word novel in thirty-days challenge, infuriated authors last week, after organisers appeared to support the use of AI tools by participants. While they didn’t specifically endorse apps such as ChatGPT, they did not rule them out either:
NaNoWriMo neither explicitly supports nor condemns any approach to writing, including the use of tools that leverage AI.
NaNoWriMo’s neutral stance however has upset many writers. Not only do they feel generative AI tools threaten their livelihoods, some have also seen their own works used to “train” AI chatbots, usually without their permission or knowledge.
To these authors, the neutral position represents support of this conduct. But like many segments of society, NaNoWriMo, and its community of amateur and professional writers, have been grappling with the advent of AI technologies. Organisers say their (since amended) AI policy was intended to put an end to what had become inflammatory discussion on the topic:
In early August, debates about AI on our social media channels became vitriolic. It was clear that the intimidation and harassment we witnessed were causing harm within our community of writers. The FAQs we crafted last week were written to curtail those behaviors.
I don’t really know much about the NaNoWriMo community, but with over half a million members globally, it surely represents a wide and varied group of writers. Although some six-hundred NaNoWriMo manuscripts have gone on to be published, for many participants the writing challenge is simply a fun way to pass some time. The majority are not looking for publishing deals. I’d venture to say some participants may not be the greatest of writers. Others might struggle, for whatever reasons, to put a story idea they have, into words.
NaNoWriMo is saying they don’t have a problem with some of their members using AI tools, if it helps them with the process, be that drafting or proofreading. But they make an obvious caveat:
If using AI will assist your creative process, you are welcome to use it. Using ChatGPT to write your entire novel would defeat the purpose of the challenge, though.
I’m not in favour of using AI apps in any creative endeavours, particularly writing. Personally, I don’t think AI has any place in NaNoWriMo, for the precise reason organisers have stated above. AI defeats the purpose. But we’re getting to the point where it’s going to be hard to tell what work has been AI assisted, and what hasn’t. Plagiarism tools may be effective, but not if the AI apps stay one-step ahead. Imposing a ban on AI apps seems pointless. AI is here to stay, and is only going to more deeply embed itself in our lives. This is what we need to expend our energies on navigating.
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artificial intelligence, books, events, literature, technology
Ghosted World: An Uncanceled Asian American Literature Festival
31 July 2023
Partners and participants of this year’s abruptly cancelled Asian American Literature Festival (AALF) are staging a smaller version of the event from Friday 4 August 2023, through to Sunday 6 August. Like the original event, which was meant to take place in August, Ghosted World will be held in Washington D.C., the United States capital.
AALF partners and participants, some of whom have banded together as the Asian American LitFest Collective (AALC), remain upset by the sudden decision of the Smithsonian, producers and hosts of the biennial AALF festival, to cancel the 2023 event. Although the institution later apologised, AALC members say the apology failed to answer questions they had about the decision, while still suggesting it was their alleged lack of planning that resulted in the festival’s cancellation.
Ghosted World is clearly a scaled back form of the original AALF, but hopefully will be of some consolation to those who had been looking forward to attending the event. A program for Ghosted World can be seen here.
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