We are pleased to announce that Festival Director Lisa Dempster has been invited to return to the Sharjah International Book Fair later this month.

Lisa attended the Fair in 2010, where she ran an Emerging Writers’ Workshop; contributed to its dynamic social media output; launched several books; discovered excellent Arabic writers and publishers; and took part in literary discussions with writers from around the world.

Impressed with Lisa and the Emerging Writers’ Festival’s innovative programming ideas and expert use of social media, the Sharjah Book Fair has again extended an invitation for us to attend and take part in their 30th annual Festival.

This cultural exchange will create for the Emerging Writers’ Festival another opportunity to connect with a growing literary community, where we will continue to promote and strengthen Melbourne’s position as a UNESCO City of Literature. Additionally, her attendance at the Sharjah International Book Fair will enable Lisa to create new and exciting opportunities for our writers and festival audience at home and beyond in 2012.

Lisa will be blogging about her experiences at Sharjah International Book Fair here at the EWF blog, including video interviews with writers from around the world. She will also be updating her own blog and tweeting from the @emergingwriters twitter stream – a great opportunity to gain an insight into this truly multicultural literary event.

More on Sharjah International Book Fair in the coming days…

One of the biggest challenges facing writers in 2011 is choice.Almost as loud as the voice that asks are we going to write today? are new accompanying (and irritating) voices asking who are we writing for?, what format should we write in?, which word p… Continue reading →

Given EWF’s current focus on our Digital Writers crowd-funding project that will deliver a digital writing event for emerging writers in Queensland, we thought it would be good to ask a Queensland blogger who attended EWF 2011 what they saw as being the benefits of EWF for emerging writers.

Sian Campbell (aka Monster Girl) is the Emerging Writers’ Festival’s Official Brisbane Blogger. She is about all things books and writing and confesses that “all my Star Wars dvds are technically my dad’s”. She came to Melbourne in May. She saw things at EWF 2011. We asked her a few questions and this is what she said.

EWF: What were the highlights of your visit?

Sian: My highlights of the EWF festival in Melbourne were meeting so many fabulous new friends and industry professionals, the slide night, the discovery of The Cupcake Family macarons, discovering my inner LEGO poet at Rue Bebelons, finally buying Voiceworks after being ‘just’ a reader for so long (which then lead to be submitting to and getting into the upcoming issue!) and all the meaty goodness I found contained inside The Reader books I picked up (picked up both at the festival bookstore on sale, bargains = another highlight!)

EWF: Why are you excited about the Emerging Writers’ Festival coming to Brisbane?

Sian:I’m excited about EWF hitting up Brisbane because I live here and I miss you guys! It might not be the same without trams but I’m sure we can do figure out something involving CityCats, right? It’s also mega convenient because I’m at Avid Reader too much as it is and so now my lurking can also fulfil some sort of social/professional purpose…theoretically. Will there be LEGO Poetry at Avid? Because there should be LEGO Poetry at Avid.

EWF: As the official blogger of EWF Brisbane what sort of things will you be writing about?

Sian: And as blogger of EWF Brisbane I’ll be trying to let people in on what’s happening up here – the Digital Writing conference, the spelling bee and all that literary fun, as well as how people can support emerging writers, and maybe I’ll feature some mini-interviews with other emerging Brisbane writers too for funsies. We shall see but I’ll try to make it interesting.

We are looking forward to it. And, to help make it happen you can purchase tickets or donate over at our Pozible page.

Yesterday we announced our new partnership with Pozible, a crowdfunding platform for creatives. Today we’re letting you know that we’ve launched our own crowdfunding campaign with Pozible, Digital Writers. (See what we did there?)

Taking place on Saturday 15 October, Digital Writers: taking your words online is a mini-conference aimed at equipping writers with ideas and inspiration about sharing their work with audiences online.

Panel discussions full of practical advice will explore how to write for online audiences, and where the opportunities are in the digital space. Our talented line-up of writers will share how they use new technologies to create, to market and to make money by their writing. Our line up of speakers are experts in online writing, publishing and marketing, including:

• Sophie Black, Editor, Crikey.com.au
• Andrew McMillen, Freelance Journalist
• Jason Nelson, digital & hypermedia poet
• Simon Groth, novelist & If:Book Director
• Alan Baxter, freelancer & spec fiction author
• Karen Pickering, commentator & editor
• Christy Dena, Director, Universe Creation 101
• Lisa Dempster, blogger & festival director
• Daniel Donahoo, writer, blogger & geek
• & more to be announced

From blogging and tweeting to online journalism, and everything in between, Digital Writers is an event for writers wanting to use the online space to take their writing to the next level.

If you’re in Brisbane, you can pre-purchase your tickets to Digital Writers by supporting us on Pozible!

If you’re not in Brisbane, there are still plenty of tasty rewards up for grabs, including LEGO poetry, postcards from our writers, EWF crew tshirts, and an invitation to a very cool online standup comedy show (for real!). We are even able to supply tax receipts for donations over $2, which are tax deductible (just drop us a line if you need one).

To be partnered by If:Book Australia and Queensland Writers’ Centre, Digital Writers will only go ahead if we can reach our $4000 funding target on Pozible.

So what are you waiting for? Click on over to support EWF Digital Writers!

One of the things that we love to do at the Emerging Writers’ Festival is to empower writers to take control of their careers. Writing is no longer just about being picked up by a publisher. These days, developing an audience and making markets for your work can be just as important as the writing itself.

So today we are pleased to introduce a new partnership with Pozible, a crowdfunding platform for generating incomes for creative projects and ideas.

As partners, we will be working with Pozible to ensure that writers across all genres and mediums have access to the tools and assistance needed to launch their own crowdfunding projects. Emerging Writers’ Festival artists will also be able to access special discounted service fees on the Pozible site.

In addition, the EWF are using Pozible to crowdfund our own project! Stay tuned for more on that shortly…

The 2011 Emerging Writer’s Festival made a solid case this weekend as “the writers’ festival for writers”, with a solid two day lineup of workshops and conversations with local, national and international writers.With topics ranging from podcasting to … Continue reading →

I may not have mentioned it yet, but this week I’m extra excited to be posting as part of the 2011 Emerging Writers’ Festival blogging team.The festival opened last night with the gala First Word event, which featured songs, comedy and readings from a … Continue reading →

Join us for a sneak peek at one of our Festival highlights, Seven Enviable Lines…

Happening in the Menzies Building, Building 12, Lecture Theatre 3.

The VU Blog Squad is the official team of reporters covering the Emerging Writers’ Festival, right here on our blog. They’ll also be tweeting from @VUBlogSquad.

VU Blog Squad are a talented group of young writers from Victoria University. In the time we have spent with them we’ve been absolutely blown away by how imaginative and creative they are, so look out for them at our events and stay tuned for all the news and views from the festival, as told by the VU Blog Squad!

Introducing the newly appointed editor of our publication, The Reader – Karen Pickering…

What an incredible thrill to be asked to edit the Emerging Writers’ Festival Reader! I want to take this opportunity to thank the powers that be for giving me a shot and I very much hope to make Cool Stuff Happen.

So this year, I’ll be getting along to as many events as possible and I’ll be the one pumping hands and asking lots of questions.* That’s because every year hundreds of writers get together at EWF to share protips, dissect the industry and discuss the craft in loving detail, so the ideas generated at each festival can be captured in a butterfly net and pinned to the pages of The Reader. This is a community service to all those who attended the festival, those many more who can’t, and anyone who wants a roadmap to that conceptual destination: a successful career as a writer.

Writers are hiding in the most unlikely places and this year we’ll welcome novelists, playwrights, poets, screenwriters, copywriters, academics, editors, bloggers, Tweeters, journalists, memoirists, critics, lyricists, directors, ghostwriters, storyboarders, game developers, translators, cartoonists, zinesters, presenters, comedians, anthologists, reporters, filmmakers, publishers, columnists, podcasters, and historians. If you can’t find your bliss here, you might want to check your pulse.

I want to tip my hat right now to Dion Kagan and Aden Rolfe who’ve steered the good ship Reader thus far and done a superb job, and to everyone else, if you see me wandering around this year, please come and say hello. I’d dearly love to hear your thoughts on how we can take The Reader to that elusive “next level” and share some of the good vibes that always fill the air during the Emerging Writers’ Festival.

*So it won’t be markedly different to other years except for a heightened sense of professionalism and less swearing. Okay, I can’t promise that.

Follow Karen on Twitter, @jevoislafemme!