Blue Mountains Writers’ Festival Workshops 1 - 3 November 2024
Memoir, poetry, illustration, and so much more . . . This year's Festival workshop program features exceptional facilitators from all around Australia, each adept at discovering the writer — or illustrator — inside us all. Skills development workshops include memoir, poetry, crime fiction, nature writing, finding your voice, drawing, pitching, editing and lyric writing. We have two free workshops presented by Arts Law, focusing on legal issues for writers, and our popular one-on-one consultations with Varuna mentors Carol Major and Felicity Plunkett. Book now as workshops generally sell out fast.
EXPERIMENTS IN POETIC FORM with Felicity Plunkett
Explore a diverse array of poetic forms and unique prompts and possibilities, then begin drafting your own new poems, with Dr Felicity Plunkett, poet, critic and former Poetry Editor at University of Queensland Press.
FIND YOUR STORY, FIND YOUR VOICE with Emily Maguire
Practice tried-and-true techniques for coming up with ideas, getting words on the page fast and (re)discovering your writing voice in this hands-on workshop with Stella Prize-nominated author Emily Maguire.
PITCHING TO LITERARY JOURNALS with James Jiang
Aspiring critics and essayists are invited to join James Jiang, Editor of the Sydney Review of Books, for this extended industry workshop on the art of pitching. Learn about how to approach journals, polish your pitch, craft your essay and work with editors. The seminar will include workshopping component, so please bring a brief 150-word pitch along so you can test your skills and refine your approach.
NATURE WRITING AT VARUNA with Viki Cramer
We know and understand the natural world through our intellect, senses, emotions and stories. Through close readings of particularly powerful texts, writing exercises and discussions, this workshop explores how different ways of knowing – from scientific information to sensory metaphor – can be used to build evocative descriptions of landscape, place, plants, animals and more. In this workshop, led by writer and ecologist Viki Cramer, you will also reflect on how nature writing uses story and nuanced emotion to interrogate and reflect upon our relationship, as humans, with the more-than-human world.
UNDERNEATH THE POETREE A Lyric Writing Workshop
Lyrics. Raps. Prose. Poetry. We divide and label these forms of writing, but ultimately they're all branches on the same tree of storytelling and self-expression. In this workshop with award-winning artist, poet and songwriter Nick Solo, you’ll explore the Venn diagram between these forms and the creative processes involved in their creation. You’ll explore the boundaries between these forms as well as strategies for writing within them.
WRITE THE PERFECT CRIME with Jack Heath
Are you constantly thinking about ways to get away with murder? Are you frustrated, because if your scheme works, you'll never get the credit for it? Would you like a safe outlet for your evil genius? Dive deep into the world of crime fiction with Jack Heath, bestselling author of Hangman, Kill Your Husbands and 40 other books. Meet with like-minded writers and consider how to craft flawed detectives and sinister perpetrators, richly textured settings, twists that leave readers gasping and stylish, economical prose.
SENSE MEMORY AND MEMOIR with Kris Kneen
Whether you are writing about your first sexual experience or writing about brushing your teeth, discover how to elevate your work from the mundane into an immersive, sensual, whole-body experience. In this workshop, award-winning memoirist Kris Kneen teaches you how to employ your sense memory in any given moment to make the most out of what you’ve seen, heard, smelt, felt and tasted. Through a series of exercises, activities, discussions and readings, this workshop will equip you with tools to help you remember and describe your world in a more sensual light, bringing your memoir to life for your readers.
AN ILLUSTRATED TALE Workshop with Sami Bayly
Discover your inner artist, or your inner child, and create beautiful illustrations to accompany your own writing, with illustrator Sami Bayly, known for her stunningly detailed children’s books, including the Illustrated Encyclopaedia series. With a Bachelor of Natural History Illustration, Sami enjoys painting realistic flora and fauna, skills she’ll share with participants in this hands-on workshop. Along the way, you’ll hear incredible stories from Sami’s research of the natural world, and maybe even learn an interesting fact or two about animals.
EDITING YOUR OWN WORK with Peter Polites
Ernest Hemingway once said writing is rewriting. He understood that while writing can be a truly demanding process, it’s the editing of your work that can be hardest of all. In this workshop with award-winning novelist Peter Polites, you’ll discover key strategies for editing your own work. You’ll unpack the use of grammar in your work, explore techniques for editing structure, and hone your editing skills using a mix of hands-on practice during the workshop, as well as worksheets to take home.
DEFAMATION LAW FOR WRITERS Free Arts Law Workshop
Join the Arts Law Centre of Australia for an overview of Australian defamation law and recent cases, as well as tips on how to balance defamation risk and expression as a writer in Australia. Whether you are a fiction or non-fiction writer, defamation can be an issue if you choose to base your writing on real people. This session will take you through what to look out for and how you can deal with defamation risks.
LEGAL ISSUES 101 FOR WRITERS Free Arts Law Workshop
Yellowface was fun – if you’re not June Hayward or Athena Liu, the two central writer-characters of the 2023 bestselling novel by R F Kuang. But for an emerging writer trying to make a name in the industry, there are so many red flags. Join the Arts Law Centre of Australia for this workshop that will outline some practical tips for writers in avoiding scandals or other legal pitfalls. You may not learn first aid or how to avoid an untimely death from choking on pancakes, but you will hear about how to avoid being accused of using someone else’s work, and what to do if you are. You’ll also learn about how to protect your copyright and avoid cultural appropriation, seen through the lens of Australian Indigenous Cultural Intellectual Property. Last, this workshop will discuss things to look out for in a publishing contract.