2001 AAWP conference

Writing Realities: The State of the Art

Convenor
Dr Jen Webb
School of Creative Communication and Culture Studies
University of Canberra
ACT Australia 2601
Phone: +61 (0)2 6201 2321
Fax: +61 (0)2 6201 5300
Email: jlw@comedu.canberra.edu.au

1. Background
The Australian Association of Writing Programs was established in 1996 with its first conference, a gathering of teachers and students of creative and professional writing at the University of Technology, Sydney. Since then it has held its annual conferences at Deakin and RMIT in 1997, Adelaide in 1998, Edith Cowan in 1999 and Griffith University (Gold Coast) 2000. The 2001 conference will be held at the University of Canberra. The annual AAWP Conference is now the most important forum in Australia for the discussion of all aspects of teaching creative and professional writing and for debating current theories on creativity.

2. Writing 2001 - program
The conference themes are set out below. We also plan several panels where issues to do with the conference theme can be explored. One will be a panel of College and university creative writing students who will 'talk back' to teachers and program convenors about their perceptions of the strengths and weaknesses of the teaching of writing. Another will deal with writing and publishing in specific genres, and a third will bring together editors and publishers to provide their impressions of the state of the art in writing and the teaching of writing.

Abstracts are invited for 20 minute papers or for panels for this year's conference. We will focus closely on professional development - of writing programs, of teaching approaches, and of teaching practice in a wide (and extra-university) context. Conference themes are outlined below, and you are encouraged to present work that fits within those broad themes, though topical papers that don't obviously match the streams are also welcomed. The deadline for receipt of abstracts has passed, but you may still be able to fit into the conference program; please contact the convenors (address below) if you have a paper you'd really like to give.

AAWP 2001 conference fees:
Student member - Earlybird $120 (includes GST) $ _______________
Student member - Full: $150 (includes GST) $ _______________
Standard member - Earlybird $250 (includes GST) $ _______________
Standard member - Full: $275 (includes GST) $ _______________
Single day attendance - $110 (includes GST) $ _______________
Conference dinner - $50 p/person (includes GST). $ _______________
Total cost $ _______________

(Earlybird rates apply to registrations received on or before 1 October 2001.)

Keynote speakers for this year's conference include Bill Manhire from New Zealand. Having Bill as keynote not only provides access to the approaches he brings to his very successful writing programs; it also offers the opportunity to promote relations between the AAWP and writing programs in NZ.

Bill Manhire was born in Invercargill, New Zealand, in 1946, and is now Professor of English and Creative Writing at Victoria University of Wellington, where he also directs the New Zealand co-centre of the International Institute of Modern Letters. He is a prize-winning poet and fiction writer, and has edited a number of bestselling anthologies of New Zealand fiction (UQP's The New Zealand Collection) and poetry (100 New Zealand Poems), as well as the Australasian/Pacific edition of Bloomsbury Publishing's Soho Square. He has also written a critical study of the novelist Maurice Gee for OUP, while Victoria University Press published his Doubtful Sounds: Essays and Interviews in January 2000.

Manhire began academic life as an Old Norse scholar, and since the late 1970s he has been involved in developing the creative writing program at Victoria which now takes up most of his time. In 1997 he was appointed New Zealand's first Te Mata Estate Poet Laureate, and during his laureate term travelled to Antarctica on the inaugural Antarctic Arts Fellowship (his two-week visit included 45 semi-heroic minutes at the South Pole). In 1999 he was visiting Fulbright Professor in New Zealand Studies at Georgetown University. His Collected Poems, which include a substantial group of poems written in Antarctica, have just been published in New Zealand and the UK.

KEYNOTE ABSTRACT:
MUTES & EARTHQUAKES: CREATIVE WRITING AT VICTORIA
In New Zealand Bill Manhire's creative writing programme is admired and reviled in equal measure because of its extraordinary impact on recent New Zealand writing and publishing. Something like 20% of US Fulbright applicants to New Zealand nominate the Victoria MA in Creative Writing as their proposed degree qualification, while the weekly magazine The Listener recently pronounced, in bothered tones: '"Attended Bill Manhire's creative writing course at Victoria University" has gained such strength as a brand that it can now be used to market books. Readers buy Manhire alumni books in the same confidence with which they would hire a Harvard law graduate or a philosopher from the Sorbonne.'
Victoria graduates include fiction writers Elizabeth Knox, Emily Perkins, Catherine Chidgey, Barbara Anderson, William Brandt, Barbara Else, Kapka Kassabova, Anthony McCarten and Kirsty Gunn; playwrights Ken Duncum, Jo Randerson, David Geary, Duncan Sarkies and Anthony McCarten; and poets Dinah Hawken, Chris Orsman, James Brown, Paola Bilbrough, Stephanie de Montalk, Kate Camp and Jenny Bornholdt. Between them these and other Victoria graduates have won all of New Zealand's major literary awards. Bill Manhire will outline the history and philosophy of Victoria University's creative writing program, and describe its relationship to the recently launched International Institute of Modern Letters.

3. The conference theme
Three streams that circulate around the topic of 'state of the art' have been selected as priority areas for this conference:

(i) State of the art - teaching
v Plagiarism and pastiche
v Assessment issues
v Twin hats: writing and teaching writing
This stream focuses on teaching approaches, ways of structuring writing programs within mainstream higher education institutions, and ways of maintaining a professional/creative profile while practicing mainly as a teacher.

(ii) State of the art - technologies
v The book - making and marketing (incorporating a panel of editors/publishers/ARB)
v New technologies and writing/teaching
v Professional associations and writing programs
The focus in this stream is on the professional 'face' of writing. Here we provide a forum for discussion of ways of integrating higher education institutions with the professional sectors (publishers, distributors); ways of negotiating new technologies in both writing and publishing; and interfaces between the institution and community/professional writing groups.

(iii) State of the art - texts and transformations
v Creative practice
v Genre writing
v Page to stage (or screen) - scriptwriting and prose
This stream provides a forum for the specifics of writing, with attention to the creative skills and attitudes required, and to the relationships between various forms or genres of writing.

4. Forum Questions: Creative Work as Research: Accreditation and Research Equivalence.

This is a forum to canvass the ways in which we would like our work to be evaluated by government funding bodies. We need to devise strategies to maximise our input into the present power structures that do not consider creative work equivalent with more traditional research. There are a host of questions that need to be addressed. Below are just some of them.

Question 1: How do we compile and maintain a comprehensive list of the types of discourse produced in writing programs?

Question 2: How do we decide how to categorise each work and who does the categorising? In other words, who devises the guidelines?

Question 3: Do individuals or institutions submit work for evaluation?

Question 4: How do individuals and/or institutions appeal against judgments?

Question 5: How do we lobby DETYA and the ARC to accept our evaluations?

Question 6: How and how often do we update our methods?

Question 7: How do we keep in contact with developments concerning accreditation methods in other art forms?

Question 8: Do we form a National Peer Review Board even if DETYA and the ARC do not acknowledge its power to evaluate?

Question 9: Who would be on this Board and for how long?

Question 10: What would the terms of reference of this Board be? Who would devise the terms of reference?

Question 11: Would the Board only consider exceptions to the guidelines or would it have to vet all work?

5. Contact details
Please send registration forms, abstracts and/or enquiries to:

Dr Jen Webb
School of Creative Communication and Culture Studies
University of Canberra
ACT Australia 2601
Phone: +61 (0)2 6201 2321
Fax: +61 (0)2 6201 5300
Email: jlw@comedu.canberra.edu.au

Registration Form:

Writing Realities:The State of the Art

University of Canberra
23 - 25 November 2001

The Australian Association of Writing Programs
Annual conference

Registration Form
for the conference

University of Canberra
ABN: 81 633 873 422

I would like to attend the 'Writing Realities' conference at the University of Canberra on 23-25 November 2001.

PLEASE PRINT:
TITLE: FIRST NAME :
SURNAME:
POSITION:
INSTITUTION:
ADDRESS:
POSTCODE:
PHONE: FAX:
EMAIL:

Please tick or complete as appropriate:
· I am a student and will be eligible for the discount. My student ID number is:
· I have offered a paper/presentation
· I require overhead projection/television, video or data projection/other special equipment.
(Please provide details.)
· I will be attending the conference dinner ($50 p/p; Sat. 24 Nov) No. attending:
· I require vegetarian/other special meals (please provide details)
· I have special needs (please provide details)

Earlybird rates: apply to registrations received on or before 5 October 2001.
For cancellation of registration:
50% of the registration fee will be refunded provided the cancellation is made before 30 October 2001. Cancellations made after that date are not refundable.

AAWP 2001 conference fees
(Morning/afternoon teas and lunches are provided.)

*Student; earlybird $120 (includes GST) $
*Student; full: $150 (includes GST) $
*Standard; earlybird $250 (includes GST) $
*Standard; full: $275 (includes GST) $
*Single day attendance: $110 (includes
GST; indicate day attending) $
*Conference dinner - $50 p/person (includes GST)
Number of tickets/cost $

Total cost $

Payment:
I enclose cheque for $______ (make cheques payable to the University of Canberra) or
Please debit my credit card (tick)
Bankcard Mastercard Visa AMEX
Card no:
Expiry date: Amount: $
Cardholder's name (please print):
Signature:

Accommodation

BELCONNEN PREMIER INN

Address - Cnr Belconnen Way & Benjamin Way
Belconnen, ACT, 2617
Ph: (02) 6253 3633

Rates - Corporate rates available:
- SINGLE/TWIN $100 p/n (Mon-Thu), $90 (Fri-Sun)
- 1 BEDROOM APARTMENT for 2 people $132 (Mon-Thu), $126 (Fri-Sun). Sleeps up to 4 people, with additional persons $25 each, children under 12 free.
- 2 BEDROOM APARTMENT for 2 people $164 (Mon-Thu), $155 (Fri-Sun). Sleeps up to 6 people, with additional persons $25 each, children under 12 free.

Transport-
Easy 20 minute walk to the University of Canberra
- A taxi charge to/from Canberra Airport is approximately $27.

Near by -
Within walking distance from Westfield Shopping Town, Lake Ginninderra, and the Belconnen bus interchange.

CANBERRA CITY GATEWAY MOTEL

Address - Cnr Mouat St & Northbourne Ave
Lyneham, ACT, 2602
Ph: (02) 6247 2777

Rates -
SINGLE $98 per night
TWIN $118 p/n
EXTRAS $10 per person per night
Breakfast included

Transport -
No. 80 bus leaves from Cnr Northbourne and Macarthur St every half hour from 7:09am - 10:17pm weekdays, every hour from 7:35am - 7:35pm on Saturdays, and every hour from 8:32am - 6:32pm. Route goes straight through to the university campus and takes approximately 15 minutes.
- A taxi charge to/from Canberra Airport is approximately $19
- A taxi to/from the University of Canberra is approximately $10

Near by -
Close to Canberra city

BELCONNEN HOTEL/MOTEL & SERVICED APARTMENTS

Address - Cnr Belconnen Way & Springvale Drive
Belconnen, ACT, 2617
Ph: (02) 6254 2222

Rates
- SINGLE $72 per night (room only), OR $84 p/n (with Breakfast)
- TWIN $86 p/n r/o, OR $110 p/n b/b
- UNDER 16's $19.50 p/n r/o, OR $29.50 p/n b/b

Transport-
No. 217/117 bus leaves Hawker shops every half hour from 8:00am - 10:30pm weekdays, and every hour from 10:00am - 4:00pm Saturdays. The route stops on College St next to the University and takes approximately 15 minutes. The no. 17 bus leaves Hawker Shops at 8:40am Saturday mornings running through to the Belconnen Interchange (a 10 minute walk from the university), and on Sundays leaves hourly from 9:05am - 3:05pm and 4:19pm - 7:16pm.
- A taxi charge to/from Canberra Airport is approximately $26
- A taxi to/from the University of Canberra is approximately $9

Near by -
Adjacent to shopping centre and Belconnen Soccer Club

JAMISON INN HOTEL MOTEL

Address - 3 Bowman St
Belconnen
Ph: (02) 6251 2111

Rates -
SINGLE $60 per night (room only)
- TWIN $75 p/n r/o
- TRIPLE $85 p/n r/o
- FAMILY (4) $90 p/n r/o
- Breakfast from $5 p/p

Transport-
Easy 20 minute walk to University of Canberra
- A taxi charge to/from Canberra Airport is approximately $24
- A taxi to/from the University of Canberra is approximately $7

Near by -
Adjacent to shopping centre

Other Activities

- See 'Celebrate Canberra' brochure for activities and attractions in and around Canberra. (Available in conference kits.)

- The University of Canberra Union Recreation Centre provides fitness, recreation, sports facilities and services for university staff and students, and the local community. The University of Canberra Union Gym will be offering delegates discount rates. The recreation centre facilities available include: squash courts; tennis courts; aerobics and fitness classes; cardio training area; weights area; and a circuits room.

- For childcare on campus during the conference, please contact the convenors.