By Kevin O’Brien Why not join us for the Fiction Feedback focus group? I should start this blog post by saying that good editors will ask you more than five questions about your novel, but I’ve chosen the following issues in particular as they can be the hardest to fix if left until the end […]

By Lynette Washington This year I embarked on the biggest editing job of my career. In the past I’d edited individual stories, mammoth technical manuals, small magazines, brochures and websites, but I’d never edited a collection of short stories, and this task felt different. More important. The collection, which came to be called Breaking Beauty, […]

By Gillian Dooley Three years ago I sent a fan email to a writer I’d just discovered. She had written an amazing novel and I was reviewing it for Radio Adelaide’s Writers’ Radio program. But I wasn’t content with just writing a rave review. I had questions. I wanted answers. So I invited her to speak at […]

By Amy T Matthews It’s Adelaide Writers’ Week and I’m chairing two panels, featuring four writers. I only arrived back in the country a couple of weeks ago and I’ve been flat-out trying to read the books, as well as get two new courses up and running at Flinders University, where I teach. I’ve had […]

By Ben Brooker There is no single way to write a review. These days, a work of criticism can be anything from a 140-character tweet, to a 200-word capsule review in a newspaper, to a 10,000-word essay on a blog. Each of these formats has its own requirements for length and style. But, assuming you’ve […]

By Vanessa Jones Do you want to write your memoir or life story but don’t know where to start? In September, thanks to Australia Council for the Arts, we were fortunate enough to have Benjamin Law teach a Writing Memoir masterclass. Here are some valuable words of advice on how to get your story started […]

By Georgina Chadderton Come to Georgina’s workshop here (kids only!)   I’ve been writing and drawing comics for almost as long as I can remember and have found comics the perfect medium to help me share the stories I have to tell. ‘Why comics?’ I hear you ask—well, let me explain! I love reading, writing […]

By Barbara Santich Food writing, paradoxically, is not really about food. Or not objectively about food in isolation. More often, food writing is about people and their experiences of growing, sourcing, cooking, offering and eating food; it’s about their relationships with food, their memories associated with food, the place of food in their lives. Writing […]

By Lou Heinrich NB: Lou will be presenting ‘How to Interview Like a Journalist’ as part of the Teenage Boot Camp.   A writer who can’t interview is like a fisherman who doesn’t know how cast a line. It’s an essential element of gathering information; novelists, screenwriters, journos and memoirists all have to discover how […]

By Louise Pascale Blogs come in all shapes and forms. They can be one word, one sentence, one paragraph, one page or 10 pages. A blog is however long or short you wanting it to be, this is self-publishing. You decide. Yet how long you make your blog is really only one of the many […]

By Ben Brooker Everybody has a point of view but it takes more than just an opinion to be able to write a review that other people will want to read. Your job as a reviewer is not just to tell your readers if you thought a book, play or movie was good or bad […]

Mike Ladd gives ten short tips on how to assess if a poem is successful: It entertains – in the broadest sense, you want to stay with it. It’s visual/aural/sensual. It has intelligence and feeling. Not only do you come away with ideas, but the sense of having felt something, experienced it. It’s memorable, you […]

Carissa Lee Goodwin, ATSI Program Coordinator If you were a supermarket item, what would you be and why? Garlic tofu. Because it’s awesome, and for some reason only certain Coles supermarkets have it, you have to go on a bit of a quest for it. If you could be a super hero, what power would […]

By Sarah Tooth Earlier this year I was lucky enough to have been invited to attend the 2014 Asia Pacific Writers and Translators Conference in Singapore in July by Jane Camens. Jane is a tireless supporter of writers and writing, who has built the APWT organisation to support strong literary networks in our region. (more…)

Sarah Gates, Administration Assistant  If you could be a super hero, what power would you like to have? Teleportation: apart from the exquisite holidays and abundant international travel, I would cut out all the useless time spent commuting to university, work and anywhere else. And I could rescue people from natural disasters, if super heroes […]