Wednesday 3rd March
Nature Writing with Dael Allison
10.00 to 12.00 midday
Sydney Junction Hotel
Beaumont St, Hamilton
Please book by phoning Jan on (02) 49 549 895 by 26th February. Limited vacancies. $20 for non FAW members
Dael’s poetry, essays, memoir and short stories are published in Australian anthologies and literary magazines, including Island, Famous Reporter, Hecate, Five Bells and Blue Dog. She recently won the Jean Ringland Award for Poetry and the 2009 NSW LitLink Award for an unpublished novel. Last year she co-judged the $5000 Wildcare Tasmania International Nature Writing Prize, awarded to a Canadian author. She was runner up in the Wildcare Prize in 2005 and as winner in 2007 she also enjoyed a two-week writing residency on Maria Island National Park, off Tasmania’s east coast. She was a panellist at three writers’ festivals and has been interviewed by Ramona Koval on the ABC’s The Bookshow. Having edited the past three Poetry at the Pub anthologies, Dael is working on a poetic series about the late artist Ian Fairweather.
Sat 6th March - Kirsten Tranter
Where? The Hunter Writers Centre
When? Sat 6th March
What time? 10 am - 3pm
How Much? $55 conc member, $66 member, $88 non member.
GETTING STARTED AND GETTING AN AGENT plus THE FINE ART OF ADAPTION
Kirsten Tranter spent years working for a literary agency and completing a PhD in English before completing her first novel, The Legacy, which has been released in Australia by Harper Collins and will also be published in the US and UK. In this two-part workshop, we will discuss some of the ins and out of getting your first project started - and published - and then do some hands-on work with the process of adapting stories from other sources to meet your own narrative ends.
Part One: Getting started and getting an agent.
Kirsten will give an overview of how she conceived the idea for her book, and discuss aspects of her own writing process in conversation with participants. We will then talk about what to do at the other end of the process, when the project is in search of an agent and/or publisher. Why is it good to have an agent? At what stage in your project should you approach an agent? What is the protocol for approaching an agent? What are the key elements of a good synopsis and an interesting cover letter? What are some of the sure-fire turn-offs for an agent?
Part Two: The Fine Art of Adaptation.
Kirsten’s novel draws on elements of Henry James’ novel The Portrait of a Lady, and weaves them into her own story about friendship, loss and love in Sydney and post-9/11 New York - with borrowings from Raymond Chandler along the way. The concept of making stories out of the raw materials of other stories has a long and illustrious history, from Ovid to Shakespeare through to the contemporary obsession with adaptations of Jane Austen. In? Shakespeare’s time, hardly anyone thought about making up their own story: the whole idea of artistic invention was invested in other aspects of the process - not the story itself, but how it was told and re-told, reframed and reinterpreted. Our ideas about originality are very different now, but we still love to hear our favourite stories re-told in a way that makes us see them anew - or turns them inside out. We will look at some key examples of adaptation including Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet and Macbeth and Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (via Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones’ Diary) and Emma (via Clueless).
We will choose two or three classic stories and spend some time brainstorming ideas about how these plots could be adapted into different settings and forms, addressing key questions such as how stories need to adapt to different temporal and cultural settings; how do you choose which elements to adapt, and to what extent to follow or change the original; where to draw the line between adaptation and plagiarism; what happens when you imagine the story from the perspective of a character who isn’t the main character.
Kirsten Tranter grew up in Sydney and studied English and Fine Arts at the University of Sydney. She lived in New York between 1998 and 2006, where she completed a PhD in English on Renaissance poetry at Rutgers University. She now lives in Sydney with her husband and son and is working on a second novel. Kirsten has published poetry, fiction, literary criticism, and articles on contemporary fiction. The Legacy was completed with the assistance of an Emerging Writer’s Grant from the Literature Board of the Australia Council for the Arts.
Friday 19th March
Helena Sinervo - Poetry and Translation and Meet the Author.
Where? The Hunter Writers Centre, 90 Hunter Street Newcastle
When? Friday 19th March, 1pm, then 5.30pm
Free entry
Finnish poet Helena Sinervo is coming to the HWC to run the University Postgraduate workshop on poetry and translation. HWC members are welcome to attend, please register your interest with Katharine at the office.
This will be followed by a meet the author social evening with nibbles and drinks at the Lockup on Friday night. Come along to hear Helena read some of her work and catch up with the uni creative writing crowd on what should be a great night. Refreshments provided. Free entry.
Born in 1961, Helena Sinervo graduated from Tampere Conservatoire as a piano teacher and gained her PhD at Helsinki University. At the beginning of the 1990’s she spent a year studying at Paris VII University. Helena Sinervo has published a total of seven collections of poetry. Her poems are very approachable. On a first reading they offer tableau-like snapshots, concrete imagery and beautiful lyrical descriptions, which the reader can grasp hold of, and each reading helps to open up the content of the poems even more.
