Wheeler Centre Hot Desk Fellowships 2022
28 January 2022
The Wheeler Centre, in conjunction with The Readings Foundation, are offering twenty-one fellowships to emerging writers, and a playwright. Recipients, known as Hot Desk fellows, will receive a thousand dollar stipend, and the use of a workspace at the Melbourne based Wheeler Centre for ten weeks, to work on their writing projects.
Hot Desk fellows will also have the opportunity to meet, network and work with the Wheeler Centre’s resident organisations including Writers Victoria, Emerging Writers’ Festival, Australian Poetry, Express Media, Small Press Network and the Melbourne Writers Festival. In addition, Hot Desk Fellowships introduce emerging writers and their work to the public – we will feature all our writers and their projects on our website, as well as in a special Hot Desk Edition of The Next Big Thing series.
Applications for the fellowships are open now until Monday 28 February 2022.
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Kimi, a film by Steven Soderbergh
26 January 2022
Kimi, trailer, by American filmmaker Steven Soderbergh, with Zoë Kravitz, and a virtual assistant named Kimi, in the lead roles, is a psychological thriller with some distinct shades of Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window. How can we go passed Hitchcock?
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Kazuo Ishiguro writing screenplay for Living, based on Ikiru
26 January 2022
British novelist Kazuo Ishiguro, author of Klara and the Sun, is writing the screenplay for South African film director Oliver Hermanus‘ new feature, Living, an English language adaptation of Ikiru, the 1952 film by renown late Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa. Bill Nighy and Aimee Lou Wood are set to star in the lead roles.
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2022 Text Prize entries open
26 January 2022
Entries for the 2022 Text Prize, an award for the best unpublished manuscript by young adult and children’s writers, are open until Monday 21 February 2022.
Works of fiction and non-fiction from authors both published and unpublished can be submitted, with the winner receiving a publishing contract with Melbourne based publisher Text Publishing, and a ten-thousand dollar advance against royalties.
Applications are also open for the Steph Bowe Mentorship for Young Writers, a Text Publishing initiative to encourage the work of writers under the age of twenty-five. The mentorship honours the work of late Australian young adult author and blogger Steph Bowe, who died in 2020.
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The Pink Cloud, a film by Iuli Gerbase
24 January 2022
Brazilian filmmaker Iuli Gerbase wrote the screenplay for her debut feature The Pink Cloud in 2017, and filming finished in 2019. If that seems kind of ho-hum, watch the trailer…
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What do Australian authors earn? Not a lot
24 January 2022
Writing can best be described as a labour of love, if the results of the most recent Australian Society of Authors (ASA) member survey is anything to go by. If you plan to be in it for the money, think again. If the minimum annual wage in Australia is about forty thousand dollars, most writers are making less than half of that.
- 81% earned less than $15,000 in the last financial year
- 58% of the total respondents earned between $0 and $1,999 from their creative practice
- 58% of full-time writers/illustrators reported earning less than $15,000
- 25% [of full-time writers/illustrators reported] earning between $0 and $1,999
Authors can apply to a number of agencies for funding, though there isn’t a whole of money available to begin with, and the process can be best described as competitive. The survey found over fifty percent of authors had not applied to bodies such as the Australia Council, or the Copyright Agency, since the beginning of January 2020.
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The Wriggles top the Hottest 100 with Elephant
24 January 2022
Australian children’s pop group and entertainers The Wiggles have taken out the number one spot in Australian radio station Triple J’s annual Hottest 100 countdown, with a cover of Perth based act Tame Impala’s 2012 song Elephant. Topping the coveted listener’s poll is notable for two reasons this year, it is the first time a children’s act has been voted number one, likewise a Like A Version cover song.
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Burnt Out by Victoria Brookman
21 January 2022
Writing that difficult second novel, it might be what many authors consider to be a good problem. Their debut novel has been published, an epic achievement, and now they have the opportunity to write another book. What aspiring novelist wouldn’t want to be in such a situation?
Cali, an author residing in the NSW Blue Mountains may be such a person, in Burnt Out (published by HarperCollins Publishers, January 2022) the debut novel of Australian author Victoria Brookman. Cali’s struggling to write her second novel, in fact she was meant to have turned in the manuscript long ago. In reality she hasn’t even started work on it. But for the moment that’s the least of her worries.
Her home has been destroyed by a bush fire, likewise her possessions, and to top it off her husband has left her. But Cali sees an opportunity amid the turmoil. Speaking to a television news crew, she tells them her manuscript was also incinerated, and goes onto chide politicians and well-off Australians for their inaction in response to the devastating bush fires. Her words immediately strike a chord nationwide.
After seeing her on-air rant, a billionaire offers her a place to stay in Sydney’s eastern suburbs, so she can “re-write” the novel. But will Cali overcome her second book syndrome, or will she find herself overwhelmed by the lies she keep telling everyone, including herself?
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Nick Cave: Nothing you create is ultimately your own
21 January 2022
Is it possible to create something, be it music, literature, painting, an app, well, anything that can be created really, that is uniquely yours, that doesn’t contain even an iota of an idea from a person, or a thought, you consider influential? Probably not, says Australian musician Nick Cave:
Nothing you create is ultimately your own, yet all of it is you. Your imagination, it seems to me, is mostly an accidental dance between collected memory and influence, and is not intrinsic to you, rather it is a construction that awaits spiritual ignition.
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Indie Book Awards 2022 shortlist announced
21 January 2022
The shortlist for the Indie Book Awards 2022 has been announced. Winners in the four categories will be named on Monday 21 March 2022.
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