Showing all posts tagged: events
Sydney Writers Festival 2023 program
16 March 2023
The Sydney Writers Festival 2023 program was published this evening, and features a star studded line-up of Australian and international speakers. Among them are former Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard, Sydney author Tracey Lien, Tasmasian writer Robbie Arnott, and Fiona McFarlane.
Overseas speakers include Sri Lankan writer Shehan Karunatilaka, winner of the 2022 Booker Prize, and British author Bernardine Evaristo, who will be one of the opening night address speakers. Australian author Richard Flanagan meanwhile will deliver the closing night address.
The festival — which runs from Monday 22 May, to Sunday 28 May 2023 — will take place at a number of locations around Sydney, including Carriageworks, the State Library of NSW, Penrith City Library, Sydney Town Hall, and PHIVE, Parramatta, to name a handful.
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Australian literature, events, Sydney
Ukrainian writers withdraw from Adelaide Writers Week 2023
22 February 2023
Three Ukrainian authors, Kateryna Babkina, Olesya Khromeychuk, and Maria Tumarkin, who were scheduled to speak at Adelaide Writers Week in March 2023, are no longer participating in the event:
The event’s director, Louise Adler, confirmed Kateryna Babkina and Olesya Khromeychuk, who were scheduled to speak at a session on the impact of Russia’s invasion on Ukrainian civilians, had decided not to appear. She said the move was prompted by comments of another guest, Palestinian-American author Susan Abulhawa, who has described Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as a “Nazi-promoting Zionist” and accused him of dragging “the whole world into the inferno of WWIII”.
On Tuesday, Australian law firm MinterEllison withdrew their support for the festival, in the wake of the same comments made by Susan Abulhawa, a Palestinian-American author.
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Australia, events, literature, writing
Truth Be Told, the 2023 Adelaide Writers Week program
11 February 2023
The program for Adelaide Writers’ Week 2023, which runs from Saturday 4 March though to Thursday 9 March 2023, in the capital of South Australia, has been published. This year’s theme is Truth Be Told, always a subjective, nuanced matter, as festival director Louise Adler notes:
The thread that weaves through the 2023 program of literary luminaries, writers on their way and novitiates is the notion of truth — truths we acknowledge, truths we feel are debatable and those beyond debate. Do we want truthfulness in fiction or does it only matter in nonfiction? Do novelists owe us the truth? Is the biographer’s task to tell nothing but the truth about their subject? Is my truth The Truth and yours simply your truth and therefore partial, imprecise or even suspect? Is any truth incontestable, universal? Does truth matter and if so, how should it be upheld in a world crammed with falsehoods, lies, misinformation and inaccuracies? If all ideas are reimagined or appropriated, if originality is a fallacious delusion nurtured in an artist’s garret, does truth even matter anymore?
Catriona Menzies-Pike, J.M. Coetzee, Sarah Holland-Batt, and Raina MacIntyre are among Australian writers who will be in attendance.
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Australia, events, literature, writing
Never revisit your past that includes NaNoWriMo manuscripts
7 December 2022
British journalist and writer Tim Jonze on participating in NaNoWriMo 2021, meeting the fifty-thousand word target in the requisite thirty days of November, and then… reading the work — for the first time — a year later:
Well, it’s been a year since NaNoWriMo. Could this book really be as bad as I imagined? Amazingly, the answer is no.
It is much, much worse.
Aside from the fact I could not meet the average 1,667 daily word requirement, to successfully complete NaNoWriMo, reading what I’d written, would be the other reason why I’d not take part.
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books, events, literature, writing
November is NaNoWriMo bad writing and vomit texts incoming
7 November 2022
It’s November and that means it is NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) time. Writers, whether new or established, have thirty days to pen a fifty-thousand word manuscript. That works out to about seventeen hundred words a day. A daunting task for sure, but it wouldn’t be much of a challenge if it were easy.
NaNoWriMo doubtless makes for an enjoyable way to while away cool autumn days for northern hemisphere participants. A Camp NaNoWriMo event is also held in April and July, and might suit writers based south of the equator, who’d rather be away from their laptops, enjoying the spring weather in November.
And while the vast majority of works produced during NaNoWriMo seldom sees the light of day, the event has launched the careers of several authors. But it’s not for everyone, and some writers are critical of NaNoWriMo. They say the tight deadline encourages bad writing, as people scramble to reach the fifty-thousand word target.
It’s one reason science fiction author and game developer, and past participant, Dale Thomas gave up on NaNoWriMo. But Thomas goes further than describing some NaNoWriMo output as “bad writing”. To his mind, vomit texts make for a more apt metaphor:
You see, the big problem I have with the challenge is that it forces me to write fast. Too fast for my liking. I end up vomiting all over my writing application. And because only wordcount matters and the clock is ticking, there is no time to wipe the drool from my mouth, no time to find a damp cloth to clean up the mess. The vomit just sits there, drying out, and day after day I vomit afresh. Layer upon layer of disgusting, half-digested ideas, dripping all over the once pristine white page.
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Dates announced for the 2023 Melbourne Writers Festival
22 October 2022
The 2023 Melbourne Writers Festival (MWF) will take place from Thursday 4 May 2022 until Sunday 7 May. Mark it on your calender. The 2023 event will be held a few months earlier than the 2022 which ran during September.
Update: the decision by MWF organisers to move the event to early May 2023 has upset the convenors of a number of other literary events taking place at, or around, the same time. Most noteably organisers of the nearby Bendigo Writers Festival are particularly concerned, as their event takes place at exactly the same time.
It seems to me the MWF move could have been better thought out. To say the least.
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events, literature, Melbourne, writing
Sydney to host the 2025 International Astronautical Congress
26 September 2022
With a number of planets, particularly Jupiter, dominating the eastern night sky of Australia at the moment, what better time to make mention that the 2025 International Astronautical Congress (IAC) will be held in the NSW capital, Sydney.
Founded in 1951, the International Astronautical Federation (IAF) is the world’s leading space advocacy body with around 460 members in 72 countries, including all leading space agencies, companies, research institutions, universities, societies, associations, institutes and museums worldwide. The Federation advances knowledge about space, supporting the development and application of space assets by promoting global cooperation.
The last time Australia hosted an IAC event was in 2017, when the International Astronautical Federation conference took place in Adelaide, South Australia.
On the subject of astronomical matters, check out If the Moon were only one pixel, by American interactive art director and designer Josh Worth. Now we can see why they call it space…
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astronomy, events, science, Sydney
The 2022 National Young Writers Festival
23 September 2022
The 2022 National Young Writers’ Festival (NYWF) runs from Thursday 29 September, through to Sunday 2 October, both in Newcastle, Australia (about one hundred and sixty kilometres north of Sydney), and online.
NYWF is so-called Australia’s largest gathering of young writers, with artists bringing their craft from all around (cities, regional, rural and our beloved regular cohort from Aotearoa). We showcase work in both new and traditional forms including zines, comics, blogging, screenwriting, poetry, spoken word, hip hop, music, journalism, autobiography, comedy and prose.
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Australia, events, literature, writing
Ann Mossop new Sydney Writers Festival artistic director
1 August 2022
Ann Mossop has been appointed as the new artistic director of the Sydney Writers’ Festival. Mossop, who has been behind a string of events in Sydney, has a long association with the writers’ festival:
Festival Chair Mark Scott said, “Ann Mossop comes to Sydney Writers’ Festival with a career programing cutting-edge public conversations at the Sydney Opera House for the Ideas at the House series, Festival of Dangerous Ideas, All About Women and recently as the Director of the Centre for Ideas at UNSW Sydney. Ann also has a long association with the Festival, sitting on the board from 1995–2000 and was part of the committee that established Sydney Writers’ Festival as an independent entity in 1998.”
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2022 Festival of Dangerous Ideas Sydney
29 July 2022
The Festival of Dangerous Ideas (FODI) is on at Carriageworks in Sydney, on Saturday 17 September 2022, and Sunday 18 September. In an age where any idea seems dangerous, FODI is all about having uncomfortable conversations and being unafraid to question the status quo.
FODI holds uncomfortable ideas up to the light and challenges thinking on some of the most persevering and difficult issues of our time, questioning our deepest held beliefs and desires. It presents a lineup of international and local thinkers and culture creators, inviting us all to immerse ourselves in ideas and conversations that encourage debate and critical thinking.
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