‘WRITERS ON WRITING’ PUBLIC EVENT SERIES + IN-CLASS EVENTS. AUTUMN SESSION 2012. FACULTY OF CREATIVE ARTS, UNIVERSITY OF WOLLONGONG

MARCH 26 – 27. BOOK LAUNCH, CONVERSATION, LECTURE

March 26, 4:30-6:30 pm. Dr. Francesca Rendle-Short and Dr. Merlinda Bobis Hair, Tongue, and History: Writing and Reading the Body Theatrette, Wollongong City Gallery. 41 Burelli Street, Wollongong. Co-sponsored by the South Coast Writers Centre

WRIT312 lecture on ‘Object as Autobiography: Writing the Self’: 26 March, 9:30-10:30 am.

DR. FRANCESCA RENDLE-SHORT grew up in Queensland, the fifth of six children. She has worked variously as a radio producer, teacher, editor, freelance writer and arts journalist. She is a novelist, author of Bite Your Tongue (Spinifex Press), Imago (Spinifex Press), and Big Sister (Redress Novellas). She has won the ACT Book of the Year and the ANUTech Short Story Award. Her short fictions, photo-essays, exhibition text, and poetry for the page and for the wall, have been published in literary journals and magazines, online and in exhibitions. Francesca has a Doctorate of Creative Arts from the University of Wollongong and is the Program Director of Creative Writing at RMIT. She lives in Melbourne. Website: http://www.francescarendleshort.com/

DR. MERLINDA BOBIS, a Filipino-Australian writer and performer, has published in three languages in multiple genres: novel, short fiction, poetry, and drama. She has received the Prix Italia (Radio Fiction), the Australian Writers’ Guild Award, the Steele Rudd Award for the Best Published Collection of Australian Short Stories, the Philippine National Book Award, and has been shortlisted for The Age Poetry Book Award and the Australian Literature Society Gold Medal. Her plays have been performed/produced, mostly as her one-woman show, in Australia, Philippines, US, Spain, France, China, Thailand, and the Slovak Republic. She will be launching her new novel Fish-Hair Woman. She is a Senior Lecturer and Program Convenor of Creative Writing at University of Wollongong. Website: http://www.merlindabobis.com.au

March 27, 12:30-1:30 pm. Lecture, Dr. Francesca Rendle-Short Body to Body Between the Pages: Books, Censorship and ‘Bite Your Tongue.’ UoW, Rm 25.163 APRIL 22 – 24. INDUSTRY WEEK at UoW

April 24, 10:00-11.30 am. Lecture, Prof. Stephen Muecke Fictocriticism. UoW, Rm 25.163

STEPHEN MUECKE is Professor of Writing at the University of New South Wales. He is known for his writing on Indigenous issues and his fictocritical style. Joe in the Andamans and Other Fictocritical Stories, (Local Consumption Publications, 2008) was shortlisted for the 2010 Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature in the Innovation Category. His collaborative work with photographer Max Pam, Contingency in Madagascar, appeared with Intellect Books in 2012. Recently Documenta 13 commissioned his book on Aboriginal artist Butcher Joe (Hatje Cantz Verlag, Ostfildern, 2011).

12:00-1.30 pm, UoW Function Centre 2 & 3. Industry Panel with:

PROF. IVOR INDYK is founding editor and publisher of HEAT magazine and the award-winning Giramondo book imprint, and Whitlam Professor in the Writing and Society Research Group at the University of Western Sydney. A critic, essayist and reviewer, he has written a monograph on David Malouf for Oxford University Press, and essays on many aspects of Australian literature, art, architecture and literary publishing.

DR. ANGELO LOUKAKIS has worked as a writer, teacher, scriptwriter, editor and publisher. He is the author of the fiction titles For the Patriarch, Vernacular Dreams, Messenger, and The Memory of Tides, and more recently the novel, Houdini’s Flight (HarperCollins 2010). Angelo has also written a number of non-fiction works, including a book of the SBS television series Who Do You Think You Are? (Pan Macmillan 2008). His collection of short stories, For the Patriarch, was winner of a New South Wales Premier’s Literary Award. After terms as a publisher and publishing director at HarperCollins Publishers Australia and Simon & Schuster (Australia), Angelo Loukakis went on to teach writing, publishing and editing subjects at the University of Technology, Sydney (where he was awarded a DCA in 2010) and the Australian Catholic University, Strathfield. He was a member of the Literature Board of the Australia Council and Chair of the New South Wales Writers’ Centre, and was Executive Director of the Australian Society of Authors in 2010.

MS. PIP NEWLING’s first memoir, Knockabout Girl, was published in February 2007 and she is working on her second, The Dogs of Kabul. The Reunion, a short film Pip both wrote and directed, won awards in Australia and overseas. Pip has a MA in Gender Studies (Sydney), a MA in Professional Writing (UTS) and was awarded a scholarship to research her DCA at the University of Wollongong in 2012 (which will involve writing a third memoir). For the past four years Pip has been a bookseller and book blogger in Melbourne and Sydney. She has tutored in creative writing for Open Universities Australia and RMIT. Before being fully engaged in the book industry, Pip worked in theatre and events for many years, including touring shows with Performing Lines, coordinating arts festivals and producing the AWGIE Awards for the Australian Writers’ Guild.

DR. SUSAN HAWTHORNE is a poet, novelist, aerialist, political activist and author of ten books. She grew up on a farm in rural New South Wales. She has degrees in Ancient Greek and Sanskrit as well as in Philosophy, and a PhD in Political Science and Women's Studies from the University of Melbourne. In 2009, Susan was an Asialink Literature Resident at the University of Madras, India and is currently Adjunct Professor in the Writing Program at James Cook University, Townsville and an ASA Mentor. Susan is Director of Spinifex Press and has played a leading role among independent Australian publishers in innovative and eBook publishing.

3:00-4.30 pm. Postgraduate lecture-reading, Dr. Susan Hawthorne Writing the Body and Ecology. UoW, Rm 25.163

APRIL 29 – 3 MAY. POET-IN-RESIDENCE

May 1, 6:00-8:00 pm. Public reading, Ms. Kate Middleton. UoW, Rm 25.128

May 2: CACW 201 Lecture-reading, 10:30-11:30 am WRIT 313 Lecture & workshop, 1:30-4:30 pm May 3: CACW 100/101 Lecture-reading, 8:30-9:30 am CACW 101 Workshop 1:30-3:30 pm CACW 201 Workshop 10:30-12:30

MS. KATE MIDDLETON is the author of Fire Season (Giramondo, 2009), awarded the Western Australian Premier’s Award for Poetry in 2009 and shortlisted for The Age Book of the Year in Poetry. From September 2011-September 2012 she is the inaugural Sydney City Poet. She completed her BA/BMus at the University of Melbourne, and also holds an MA from Georgetown University, and an MFA in poetry from the University of Michigan, where she won the Hopwood Awards in Poetry and Drama. She is currently working on her second book of poetry.

MAY 16. LECTURE BY ABORIGINAL WRITERS 11:30-1:30 pm. UoW, Rm 25.128.

DR. ANITA HEISS has published non-fiction, historical fiction, children’s and commercial women’s fiction, poetry, social commentary and travel articles. She is an Indigenous Literacy Day ambassador, patron of WEAVE and a proud member of the Wiradjuri nation. She co-edited, with Peter Minter, The Macquarie PEN Anthology of Aboriginal Literature. Her most recent adult novels are Manhattan Dreaming and Paris Dreaming. Her latest book is Am I Black Enough For You? She lives in Sydney.

MR. BRUCE SINCLAIR is a Metis theatre artist, teacher and arts administrator who has created and developed professional and community theatre in the Aboriginal community for 25 years. Originally from Saskatchewan in Western Canada, Bruce has performed, directed, written and facilitated theatre workshops and productions throughout Canada, the United States, Columbia, South America, Australia and London UK. He is focussing on the revitalisation of his mother tongue, Michif / Cree and the intersections of First Languages and arts practice. One of the essential aspects of his work is the inclusion of all cultures toward the sharing of traditional and contemporary stories and the intercultural harmony of art expression. Presently, Bruce works as a Theatre Officer at the Canada Council for the Arts, a national funding arts corporation that supports the arts in all disciplines. In 1993, Bruce toured the production of Wild Moon to the World Indigenous Peoples Conference on Education in Wollongong, NSW, Australia. Ahki meyimo (do your best - Plains Cree).