Writing NSW

Writing with Passion

Deborah Abela talks about the highs and lows of her career, her passions, inspiration and writing process, building a career as a children’s writer, things she wished she’d known when she started out, pivoting during the pandemic, and being part of a writing community. In conversation with Belinda Murrell.

Building Career Longevity: Publicity, social media, marketing and resilience

How do you build a thriving writing career in a rapidly changing industry? How do you help make your books sell? These highly successful professionals discuss the business of publishing including creating dynamic author platforms, social media, dealing with publishers and booksellers, advances and royalties, diverse income streams, and building resilience.

With Dot Tonkin, Paul Macdonald, Mick Elliott and Belinda Murrell (chair).

Sally Bradfield, author of Not Quite 30-Love, spoke to Samuel Elliot of The Write Way podcast, about the role Writing NSW's self-publishing course with Joel Naoum helped get her book out.

Sally Bradfield, author of Not Quite 30-Love, spoke to Samuel Elliot of The Write Way podcast, about the role Writing NSW's self-publishing course with Joel Naoum helped get her book out.

This recording is part of the Honouring Australian Writers series, where Writing NSW pays tribute to writers who have made an important contribution to our literary culture. In 2020 we honour renowned author, journalist, playwright, and political activist Katharine Susannah Prichard.

As part of re-examining Prichard’s legacy, this conversation between Jacqueline Wright and Jeanine Leane critically considers Prichard’s 1929 novel Coonardoo, and its place within a broader context of how First Nations peoples have been portrayed in their colonisers’ stories.

In this discussion are Jacqueline Wright, editor, teacher and author with over 20 years’ experience as a linguist in WA’s remote north-west on Australian Aboriginal language, interpreting and cultural programs, and Jeanine Leane, Wiradjuri writer, poet and academic who as published widely in the area of Aboriginal literature, writing otherness and creative non-fiction.

This conversation was recorded during NAIDOC Week, and Writing NSW recognises the 2020 theme Always Was, Always Will Be. First Nations people are the original storytellers on this land, and have occupied and cared for this continent for over 65,000 years.

For more recordings, videos and reading material, including a list of the texts mentioned in this recording, visit the Katharine Susannah Prichard Honouring page at writingnsw.org.au

Right now, as we each experience isolation differently, food is a comfort for many. These times are also a reminder of how much food is a vehicle for connecting with family, friends and culture.

In Talking Writing: Food, we consider the use of food to convey history, community, identity, love and memory. It can also raise complex questions of class, gender equality, our relationship with nature, and ethics.

Recorded online on Thursday 16 July, hear from a panel who experience and write about food in fascinating and varied ways. Chaired by author Debra Adelaide and featuring writer and researcher Donna Lee Brien, poet Ellen van Neerven and food writer Richard Cornish.

What is ‘normal’ when it comes to our bodies? When we think of what that is, we can’t help but be influenced by the excess of images and ideas of what we should (and shouldn’t) be. Queer bodies, obesity, bodies of colour, disability, illness and more tend to fall outside the narrow scope of the body in Australian collective thinking.

For Talking Writing: The Body, we spent the evening examining what it is to move through the world with a body that can be marginalised by the limiting socially devised definition of what the body should be and do. In this event, writers discussed writing their own bodies, identity and the challenges of representation in a country that is still grappling with notions of what a ‘normal’ body looks like.

Author and Judy Harris Writer in Residence at the Charles Perkins Centre, Tracy Sorensen, chaired this panel featuring author Peter Polites, queercrip poet and historian Robin M Eames, and award-winning Filipina poet and teaching artist Eunice Andrada.

In Febuary 2020 we gathered for an evening of readings and discussion about Africa and it's relationship and influence on writers across the diaspora as a place and culture. Panelists discussed notions of Bla(c)kness in Australia and and the diverse, complex experiences of African migrants and Afro-descendant peoples.

This panel was curated and led by actor, writer and activist Moreblesing Maturure and featured Kaiya Aboagye, Eugen Bacon and Tyree Barnette.

As this panel was a live event in a relaxed, intimate setting, we didn't use microphones and subsequently the recording is not of the highest quality. We hope you'll bear with the background noise, as the exciting conversation is worth it!

For more information on Talking Writing series and other events, head to writingnsw.org.au

On the day that Donald Trump is elected president of the United States, four Western Sydney youths clash in a string of violence, substance abuse and sexual encounters. Written by four of Australia’s most exciting new writers – Winnie Dunn, Stephen Pham, Maryam Azam and Shirley Le – Sex, Drugs & Pork Rolls is an oral storytelling experience from the heart of multicultural suburbia. Directed by Michael Mohammed Ahmad and featuring Emily Havea, Andy Trieu, HaiHa Le and Tasnim Hossain. Presented by Sweatshop: Western Sydney Literacy Movement.

Sometimes the best way to grapple with reality is to write about something else entirely. These writers have created other worlds as a way to reflect on and challenge what we consider to be solid and true. Eugen Bacon, Hannah Donnelly and Khalid Warsame in conversation with Roanna Gonsalves.