April is that time of year where writers and readers across the Hunter and Australia gather annually for the Newcastle Writers' Festival (NWF for short). This year the event took place on the 5th-7th April 2019 in the Newcastle CBD.
If you follow me on social media, you'd have seen many tweets and Insta-stories over the weekend. This year I only attended and volunteered for the Friday and Saturday sessions due to my uni workload. On the Friday I volunteered for the Schools Program, since I was already attending the Newcastle Short Story Awards later that evening. That session was live-streamed by the Hunter Writers' Centre, and overall it was great listening to the advice of the 2019 co-judge, Annabel Smith, in regards to writing short fiction. It was also wonderful to see a student taking out first place for the third year running - congratulations to Ellen Vickerman, the 2019 winner!
Saturday was a long day - I volunteered at the #Storybombing exhibition by Spineless Wonders as well as the info tables while attending the following sessions in between:
- Making a Book (hosted by FAW NSW Lake Macquarie Branch)
- The Year of the Farmer (featuring Rosalie Ham)
- Writing Women in the Wake of #MeToo
Once again NWF was a fun few days with an amazing author line-up and undeniably intriguing panels. For a summary of the amazing advice given at these session, check out my threads on Twitter. (PS: Sorry in advance for not being the world's best live-tweeter).
Next Month!
May is going to be hectic with assessments and other happenings. UoN Writers' Club is hosting two workshops with the Hunter Writers' Centre (Speculative Fiction with writer, Michael Tippet, and Crime Writing with HWC President, Megan Buxton). As part of my new job with Yak Media, I'll also be working with the team to produce 'Yak's Biggest Morning Tea' to help fundraise for the Cancer Council.
Stay tuned.
Comments