From the Director

These are intended as the first words of the tenth Emerging Writers’ Festival. Who knows how many other words have been written, spoken, noted, dropped, whispered, exploded, kicked about, over the last ten years at the previous festivals, and who knows how many will get similar treatment at this year’s festival.

We do know that the Emerging Writers’ Festival remains an intensive eleven days of literary activity. Theprogram is as big as ever this year – and with ad ded masterclasses on theatre writing, screenwriting and performing your work professionally, the Emerging Writers’ Festival continues to expand its programming to cater for writers across all genres. The hugely popular Writers’ Conference returns to Melbourne Town Hall for our opening weekend, but we’re covering new ground this year too – for our second weekend we’re heading out to Abbotsford Convent for a new program themed around art and wellbeing. And we’re going international, sending a writer to the Bali Emerging Writers’ Festival, while bringing a writer out from Indonesia for the first time as our International Writer in Residence.

It’s been incredibly fun putting this program together, because, put simply, there is nothing as rewarding for me as supporting the work of writers. I hope you have that feeling too, and you can certainly live it by joining us in supporting the writers at this year’s festival and beyond!

A very happy birthday to the Emerging Writers’ Festival!

Sam Twyford-Moore
Director, Emerging Writers’ Festival

From the Arts Minister

Congratulations to the Emerging Writers’ Festival on ten years of celebrating, supporting and promoting new Australian writers and their works. New voices and fresh ideas are the cornerstone of our City of Literature and of our State’s renowned arts scene, and the Emerging Writers’ Festival provides an important platform for these. It has had a great track record of uncovering and fostering new literary talent and giving us readers a tantalising taste of what’s to come.

It’s wonderful to see the festival continue to grow in size and stature, and extend its reach this year with screenwriting and theatre writing streams, thanks to new partnerships with ACMI, the VCA and Melbourne Theatre Company.

This year’s festival also includes the announcement of the 2013 Premier’s Literary Award for an Unpublished Manuscript. Last year’s winner, Graeme Simsion’s The Rosie Project not only went on to be published but rights have been sold to more than 30 countries– a real publishing fairy tale! I look forward seeing what lies ahead for this year’s shortlisted writers.

Publishers, performers, writers and readers, get ready to immerse yourself in the 2013 Emerging Writers’ Festival. It may be emerging in name, but after ten years of success, this event has firmly established its place in our literary and cultural scene.

May the next ten years – and beyond – be even better!

The Hon Heidi Victoria MP
Minister for the Arts