Workshops

Madelaine Lucas: Writing Dynamic Relationships

10am–1pm, Friday 12 May, slq Heritage Collections Learning Room

Join Madelaine Lucas, author of the debut novel Thirst for Salt and a professor of creative writing at Columbia University, New York, for an interactive workshop on how to craft dynamic relationships in fiction and memoir. In this generative three-hour session, we will examine the textures and tensions of relationships between strangers, lovers and family members. Through targeted prompts and exercises, writers will begin to create their own compelling portraits of intimacy and learn how to use the tools of our craft –such as voice, form and sensory detail – to avoid familiar scripts when depicting romantic or familial bonds and bring relationships to life on the page. This workshop is open to prose writers at all stages of their practice and participants will be encouraged to share their responses to in-class writing exercises with the group.

Christine Wells: Bringing History to Life

2–5pm, Friday 12 May, slq Heritage Collections Learning Room

Join internationally bestselling author of sixteen historical novels, Christine Wells, for an interactive, hands-on workshop for writers of historical fiction. Learn how to write a vivid story set in the past that will hold readers riveted, even in the age of Netflix and Nintendo. From premise, setting, structure and characterisation all the way to the final polish, Christine will share techniques and tips on how to immerse both yourself and your reader in another time and place.

Sally Piper

Sally Piper: Landscape Writing

10am–1pm, Saturday 13 May, slq Heritage Collections Learning Room

Place and landscapes are often overlooked in stories when they could be used as powerful drivers of character and narrative. This workshop aims to redress this through a series of readings, writing exercises and discussions which assist writers to re-imagine their relationship with the natural world and guide them in new ways of thinking and writing about place.

Lee Kofman:

Teaching What Makes You Blush

Lee Kofman

2–5pm, Saturday 13 May, slq Heritage Collections Learning Room

Writers’ best works often dwell in the caves of shame. Shame is a reliable barometer to detect those urgent stories we need to tell. But how to dare, and find the right language, to write about what makes us blush? Find the courage to write about what matters to you and work through the ethical issues involved (in both fiction and nonfiction), using practical exercises and strategies to make literature out of the uncomfortable.

Vanessa Len:

Writing Heroes and Villains in YA

Vanessa Len

10am–1pm, Sunday 14 May, slq Heritage Collections Learning Room

In this workshop, we’ll explore how to create heroic and villainous characters, and character premises, that can drive a novel. We’ll also run through brainstorming techniques that you can use to generate ideas and solve story problems at every stage of the writing process.

Kathleen Jennings: Australian Gothic Stories

2–5pm, Sunday 14 May, slq Heritage Collections Learning Room

Do you love the creepy and strange, the howling and mysterious, the disturbing and shadowed (or sun-bleached)?

Do you want to distil and brew your own range of Gothic tales? Writer and illustrator Kathleen Jennings teaches a crash course on harnessing the delights and terrors of the Australian Gothic. You will mine the visuals and themes of the Gothic for ideas, twist them into new shapes, experiment with shifting place and motif, and begin outlining short stories. This workshop is suitable for new and emerging writers who want to try writing Australian Gothic stories, and also for established writers who would like to try some rapid idea generation and variation in the Gothic mode. This version of the workshop focuses on writing techniques; however, illustrator-artists are welcome to attend and draw their notes and stories.