Emerging Writers’ Festival
The Emerging Writers’ Festival has appointed five Ambassadors who will share their experience, insight and knowledge with the next generation of writers at the National Writers’ Conference, a keynote event as part of the Emerging Writers Festival, Saturday 18 – Sunday 19 June 2016.
The Ambassadors, some of Australia’s best writers are: Adam Liaw, Alice Pung, Chandani Lokuge, First Dog on the Moon and Omar Musa.
The two-day National Writers’ Conference is one of the best ways for aspiring and emerging writer to get tips and advice from industry experts as well as looking at ways to refine their craft and diversify their practice.
Who has the right to a story? Where do good ideas come from? Across all genres, writers will have the opportunity to push the ideas and possibilities of the literary form to create new narratives and perspectives.
‘Over the two days, we’re attempting to answer the question: how do you be a writer in the world? Along with 50 other writers, our Ambassadors are going to lead a series of conversations, small and large. The National Writers’ Conference is for anybody with a story, and for my first Emerging Writers’ Festival, I’m so excited to showcase the incredible range and scope of the writers involved,’ says Michaela McGuire, Festival Director.
The Emerging Writers’ Festival champions emerging writers. It celebrates creativity and innovation; nurtures new talent and makes a place for diverse voices to be represented.
The full program for the Emerging Writers’ Festival will be launched Tuesday 10 May 2016.
Michaela McGuire and all the Ambassadors are available for interview.
The National Writers’ Conference, Saturday 18 – Sunday 19 June at the State Library of Victoria. Early bird tickets on sale from 30 March: $70.00 / $55.00. Bookings: emergingwritersfestival.org.au
The Emerging Writers’ Festival, Tuesday 14 – Friday 24 June 2016.
www.emergingwritersfestival.org.au
2016 EWF Ambassadors – Biographies
Adam Liaw is a cook, writer and television presenter based in Sydney, Australia. He is the author of four cookbooks. His popular television series, Destination Flavour, has travelled through Australia, New Zealand, Japan and Europe.
Adam is a regular columnist for Fairfax newspapers’ GoodFood, Sunday Life magazine and The Guardian. In 2010 Adam won MasterChef Australia. His victory is still the most watched non-sporting television event in Australian history. Adam is also UNICEF Australia’s National Ambassador for Nutrition.
Alice Pung is an award-winning author, journalist and essayist. Her first book, Unpolished Gem, is an Australian bestseller which won the Australian Book Industry Newcomer of the Year Award and was shortlisted in the Victorian and NSW Premiers’ Literary awards.
Her Father’s Daughter won the Western Australia Premier’s Award for Non-Fiction, and Alice’s third book, Laurinda, has been shortlisted for numerous awards in 2015. Alice was named one of the Sydney Morning Herald’s Young Novelists of the Year in 2015.
Chandani Lokuge migrated to Australia from Sri Lanka. She has published 14 books, 3 of which are critically acclaimed novels, including Moth and Other Stories. Her first novel, If the Moon Smiled was shortlisted for the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards and her short fiction is widely anthologised. She is also the editor for Oxford University Press of the Classic Reissue series of Indian women’s autobiographies and fiction written in English.
Among Chandani’s international appointments include the Ludwig Hirschfeld-Mack Chair in Australian Studies at Freie University Berlin (2012), and she has also held a guest professorship at Goethe University Frankfurt, and at Harvard University’s Humanities Centre. Chandani founded and directed the Monash Centre for Postcolonial Writing from 2002-2011.
Chandani lives in Melbourne and works in the Faculty of Arts at Monash University as an Associate Professor and is the Higher Degree Research Coordinator for Creative Writing.
First Dog on the Moon is a Walkley Award-winning Australian cartoonist. Up until early 2014 he was the in-house cartoonist for Crikey, a prominent Australian politics and news website, and he now works as the cartoonist for both The Guardian Australia and The Monthly. His third book, A Treasury of Cartoons, was published in 2015.
Omar Musa is a Malaysian-Australian author, rapper and poet from Queanbeyan, Australia. His debut novel Here Come the Dogs was long-listed for the Miles Franklin Award and he was named one of the Sydney Morning Herald’s Young Novelists of the Year in 2015.
