The Australian Association of Writing Programs

Would love to see some comments from everyone about the conference - feedback on various outstanding papers etc - you know the sort of thing, condensed conference in 1 page!

welcome back all

Hi Carol-Anne,

Welcome home and best wishes for the festive season - a precursor to gaining your "floppy hat" ;)   I witnessed Swinburne's great excitement (like a family reunion) and well deserved praise when Caroline Beasley graduated in October with a PhD at the Hawthorn Town Hall.

I've already found that graduating with an MA opens many doors within previously unknown networks of academic and business world circles.  I hope to be presenting a paper in the UK, in July next year.

APWN is a great site for keeping in touch, for gaining an insight into managing course studies and for hearing about writing opportunities.

When I was a child, my grandfather would always call me Master Stefan (in a stern voice) when I played up . . . I think it was a Yorkshire thing for acting above my expected behaviour.

Well, I'm starting a new one in 2010 - Linguistics this time at Monash - to complete the grounding in reading/writing/language and culture.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to everyone!

- Stefan 

Thanks for the welcome, Carol Anne.  I'm happy to be the final student editor of the month for this year, as I don't think I can keep using the label of student in 2010 (having been recently conferred).  Where this places me; I have no idea.  

Even though it is a long process, I think I can frankly admit to missing my PhD life.  It is the only time I have felt that I could be truly selfish and obsessive about my research and my fiction.  I know, I know that it feels like wading through sludge (in circles, without shoes), but it is also a time where you have a team of intelligent and deicated people helping you with your ideas, pushing you to succeed.  The best advice my supervisor, Anne Surma, gave me was to take 10 days off over Christmas before submitting.  I was completely resistant at first (I wanted the damn thing out of my house), but it was such a wonderful thing to have that time to stop, get in touch with those people who managed to hang in there (while I ignored them for study) and then come back to my project, able to see things anew.  It was like emerging from a tunnel.  I managed to pick up a few errors that I doubt I would have seen without the time off, as well as to hand the document in without feeling harried.

I urge you all to take Anne's excellent advice and have a little break over Christmas.  What you see in January will amaze you!

All the best!

The thing I most enjoyed about the AAWP conference in Hamilton was seeing the width, breadth and depth of what Creative Writing means in the academy.  I was glad to see so many approaches; some people focussed on the policy, some on the politics, others on investigating the ethics or theory of writing, others, like me, focussed on fiction.

For me, fiction has tremendous cross-over appeal; I've always believed that what we study at university is important, moreover, I believe that the things we learn must influence the mainstream.  Books (of all kinds I suppose, but especially fiction) can be sueful in bridging the gap and giving people outside the academy a taste of the exciting things we learn there.  I'm of the belief that we must remain relevant, that our ideas must get to the world outside the academy to generate interest in the academy.  As (an aspiring) writer of fiction, I see myself as a kind of creative writing/lit/cultural studies translator. 

I was proud of the WA cohort this year, and particularly enjoyed Wendy Glassby, Yvette Walker and Brooke Davis' work.  Anne Surma's work was a timely reminder (now that the sesssional year is over) of the importance of valuing our writing time.  I also enjoyed Rebecca Johinke's work on bullshit (bravo) and Carol Anne's work on policy and creative writing, Ross Watkins' work on picture books was timely and relevant .  I loved listening to creative pieces, and was getting so inspired that I wanted to WRITE.  So, my suggestion for next year would be parallel masterclasses (prose, poetry and script) on the second day of the conference, so that people can make use of the wonderful energy of the conference.  I also wanted longer lunch breaks; not only to eat, but to get to talk to all the people I wanted to chat with.  As a new Melbournite, I really enjoyed meeting up with Antonia, Angela, Liz, Clare and Annelie; it's amazing to have to go all that way to meet those who are on my campus.  

Out of interest, when you are trying to reply to a blog - the last blog on the page, if you go anywhere near the 'reply' button, the bottom of the blog and the 'reply' button disappear - what is the trick to responding to the fnial blog? - doesn't seem to be a problem for the earlier blogs.

So I guess I'll try the literal bottom blog (i.e. chronologically earlierblog post).

Would I be correct in seeing it as Caitlyn Fry's? Here goes. Oh btw I use Mozilla so it might be a browser issue if you use the dreaded IE.

As i posted the blog my menu on right changed and  Vahri's was the bottom post.  That's if you don't count my own. I am now replying to my own (obviously doh!) just to see if that is the 'reply' button you mean Di.

We might have to resort to screen shots and Swinburne email to sort this out, but one last try...

Totally support Natalie's call for a masterclass as part of the conference - so much experience and knowledge in the one place at the one time - and longer lunch breaks (I lost weight because in many a lunch/morning or afternoon tea/break I didn't reach the table because there were so many people to talk to and learn from).  This, my first experience of the AAWP conference, demonstrated that those few days of conference-time permitted us to discover that writing is not such a solitary occupation after all; that writers share similar experiences and perspectives though our interests/subjects may be diverse.  So much compacted into a couple of days! So many interesting topics and ways of seeing!  Only wish I did not have to decide between one session or another!  Can't wait until Mel;bourne and RMIT next year.

Wendy Glassby 

Hi all

Thanks Wendy for sharing your experience of the conference with us; I will have to email Jen about the masterclass.  I was wondering if any other postgrads had suggestions for panels or forums they might find useful in the future.  As an ECR I feel almost as isolated now as I did while studying.  Is there a website where we can generate ideas for life after PhDs.  What about information on further research or grant appliactions while we wait for that elusive position in academia? 

Any thoughts?