Vanessa Martida and Ida Ayu Putri Adityarini and our wonderful moderator Sudiani.

Every seat is taken, it has been like this all day, and the room has a buzz and crackle to it. There have been panel sessions on film-making, a powerful talk by one of Indonesia’s best author’s, Dewi Lestari, and a hilarious screening of short films with talks by the directors. Yesterday, I spoke with fellow panelists Vanessa Martida and Ida Ayu Putri Adityarini about the women who have influenced our work. Now, even more people squeeze through the isles – including some of the performers I saw up in Singaraja and a troop of wigged players called ‘Ghost Play’ – to join in what looks to be one of the most popular events: the open mic.

Getting well branded with Kadek, the festival's Community Development Manager.

In Australia, an open mic night is an opportunity for people to get up and try something new. It is often also the opportunity for people who aren’t their friends to get up and leave. But here in Dempsar, there is no ‘I just wrote this poem on the tram it’s not very good’. There is just the sheer joy of performance and sharing that with an audience.

Folk band Pygmy Marmoset covering 'Tonight you Belong to Me', complete with a kazoo.

As with much of the festival, a lot of it washes over me in Bahasa Indonesia. But it’s such a musical, creative crowd that of course it doesn’t matter. Nonetheless, when Akar, a young woman from Singaraja, belts out Bob Dylan’s ‘Forever Young’, I get tears in my eyes and goose bumps on my hot arms. I feel sheepish for having such a reaction to a song in English, but with the last notes the crowd behind me roars. The words of the song ring out over a festival that celebrates emergence, trying new things, workshopping, learning, experimenting: may your heart always be joyful / may your song always be sung / and may you stay forever young.

Thank you Bali Emerging Writers’ Festival and see you soon Emerging Writers’ Festival!!!

Laura Jean McKay will be appearing at Words Travel: Australia and Indonesia at the Emerging Writers’ Festival’s annual Writers’ Conference.

The Emerging Writers’ Festival/Bali Emerging Writers International Exchange is supported by the Commonwealth through the Australia Indonesia Institute of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

The Emerging Writers’ Festival is beginning this Thursday and if you’re into spoken word, there’s certainly events for you to get along to. The line-up of spoken word artists and poets in the festival program include Jessica Alice, Ali Alizadeh, Khairani ‘Okka’ Barokka, Alison Croggon, Josephine Rowe, Alicia Sometimes, Jessica L. Wilkinson and Arda Barut. There are also a heap of events that are relevant to spoken word artists, as it is for all kinds of writers.

But the most impressive event is One Night Stanza coming up this Sunday night, supported by the Emerging Writers’ Festival. American slam poet, Anis Mojgani, will perform at the Footscray Arts Centre, hosted by another American slam poet, Ken Arkind as well as Carrie Rudzinski, Randall Stephens and Steve Smart, Michelle Dabrowski, Grace Vanilau and Ajak Kwai. It is an impressive line-up and like the Global Poetics tour a few years back that Ken Arkind was apart of, it’s a very rare chance for an Australian audience to be wowed by the American slam poets that some of us have come to love on YouTube. Tickets will likely sell out so people need to book ASAP to avoid being heartbroken when all your friends rave about how great it was.

The other spoken word event that looks impressive is Sweatshop Stories. It’s brought to you by the Sweatshop Western Sydney Literacy Movement and featuring eight performers, the event describes itself as “Welcome to the sweatshops of Western Sydney, where every Aussie gets a fair go. Pockets are full and guns are empty. There are no racists here. No misogynists and no homophobes. Where the Wogs rule and the Anglos have assimilated.” It definitely sounds politically charged and unlikely to be accused of being mild-mannered and holding anything inside. As someone who grew up in Western Sydney, and who loves poets who hang their politics up on their microphone, I am sad to miss this one as I’m performing at the Dan O’Connell that afternoon from 2pm, but going along to Sweatshop Stories is probably the best excuse you’ll have for missing my own performance.

Melbourne Spoken Word will also be representing the spoken word scene in Melbourne as part of Page Parlour on the night of the 30th of May, where we will be selling books and CDs from Melbourne spoken word artists and poets. Look out for us!

With the festival almost upon us, we thought we would write a little guide to help attendees – particularly for those who haven’t been before (welcome!) and those travelling from interstate (we’re honoured!).

If you need a hand as to navigating the city, here is the post ‘Getting Around and About Melbourne‘.

If you have booked your tickets via Trybooking then you don’t need to worry about printing these out and bringing them along as we will have your name on the door list. But if you want to, then by all means!

Our new edition of The Emerging Writer will be available for purchase either through our festival booksellers, Readings, at Town Hall, Abbotsford Convent and our Gala opening, or at the registration table at other events. They RRP for $20.

Our helpful staff and volunteers are there to assist if you need anything. Don’t be shy to approach us!

Punctuality to our events is appreciated in order for them to begin at the right time – we pack a lot of talent into our program and we want you to get the most out of it!

We only have a limited number of printed programs left, but remember it is available online if you need to look up where an event is being held.

If you Tweet – don’t forget our hashtag! #ewf13

Golden Ticket badge

We’ll see you there! And have a great time!

I wake up at dawn in Bali’s far north. Team BEWF snore in adjacent rooms – we rocked out to over five hours of performance and writing madness last night. I still have the image of a green-painted, nappy-wearing beastie-boy eating a whole watermelon with his face on stage in my mind. Mid-twenties, triple-funded Melbourne performance art has nothing on this.

A farmer points me in the direction of the beach and the dogs point me away. They are large and bored and look like they might want an Australian to eat. Back at the hotel, the BEWF crew arrive one by one for a morning swim in the pool and to eat our (second) breakfast. It’s as though we’re all taking a deep breath for the next part of the festival: a two hour workshop/conversation run by Sonia and I. I take a deep breath and duck dive into the over-chlorinated water.

Sonia and I 'in conversation'.

The hall at the University is already filled and buzzing with (mostly) young people. This is most of Sonia’s creative writing course and they (like me) adore her. Sonia starts by firing a few questions at me and then we open it up to the crowd. It begins slowly, a trickle, then the full force of creative enquiry comes at us.

‘What are the ethics behind memoir writing?’

‘Do you prefer fiction or non-fiction? Performance or prose?’

‘Can you talk about conflict and what it means to a short story?’

And, inevitably, ‘What was it like to write about your open relationship? What is an open relationship?’

A character exercise, would you believe …

We move the session on to the workshop, where I’ve decided to talk about character. Character! There are some characters in the crowd. After I’ve writhed, sweated, screamed and shouted through my poetic refurbishment of ‘My way’ (who is this woman? I ask. What is her character? Drunk, we decide.) the students get their turn. I’ve asked them to write a letter in character, then read it out. We get letters consisting of only three words repeated over and over, letters that are novelistic in scope, and letters so personal that the writer disappears quickly after reading it, cigarette in mouth. We get explorations of character that would satisfy any writing how-to. We get, not the best of emerging Bali, but the best of emerging anywhere.

As a workshopper, I am stunned and admiring. As a performer, I am flattered. As an exchange … writer … I can’t wait for the next weekend in Denpasar – kicking it with the southern crowd. And then beyond that to the EWF in Melbourne, the even more southern crowd, to talk emerging writing to emerging writers.

Laura Jean McKay will be appearing at Words Travel: Australia and Indonesia at the Emerging Writers’ Festival’s annual Writers’ Conference.

The Emerging Writers’ Festival/Bali Emerging Writers International Exchange is supported by the Commonwealth through the Australia Indonesia Institute of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

We are looking for someone who can love our organisation as much as we do and who brings enthusiasm and passion to everything they do.

Download a position description including application guidelines.

Applications close 5pm Friday 7 June 2013.

This role is based at The Wheeler Centre in Melbourne.

The 2013 Emerging Writers’ Festival runs from May 23 – June 2, we highly recommend that interested applicants attend the festival.

It’s with great delight we’re able to share with you a little ‘teaser’ ahead of our very exciting Emerging Q&A evening, put together by one of the night’s panellists and our International Writer-in-Residence of the festival, Khairani ‘Okka’ Barokka.

And here’s where we need your help – Q&A wouldn’t be Q&A without audience questions, and here’s YOUR chance to contribute: if you would like to leave a question that will then be asked by our host for the evening, the dashing Benjamin Law, then please leave it here in the comments! It’s that simple. We can’t guarantee it will be asked on the evening, however, so maybe the better it is, the better your chances.

And enjoy! Tickets are selling fast, so get yours here.

I am sitting in a sweltering hall in Singaraja – the old beachside capital in the North of Bali. On stage one of the more talented singers I’ve ever heard is belting it out over the microphone. I sit with the audience, absently editing the swear words out of my performance piece with a pencil, and tugging at my (too short?) dress.

Community Development Manager Kadek takes a coffee break. Note: not poo coffee!

Since I joined the Bali Emerging Writers’ Festival (BEWF) on Friday, we have been travelling and eating. First there was the night trip from Dempsar to Ubud, waking up in the morning to meet Kadek Purnami – the Community Development Manager of the festival – who set a plate in front of me and uttered the magic words, ‘Breakfast sweets.’ Then the van ride up north towards the festival with the comedic BEWF team, who told me that the best (and most expensive) coffee in the world is kopi luwak, made in Bali. The process for making it is simple: a Luwak (little fox-like big-earred creature) eats the coffee bean, poos it out, you put it in your cup and it, literally, tastes like shit. With this in mind, when we stopped over at Lake Brantan, I opted for the paper packaged satay brunch and a nice cup of tea. By the time we arrived in Singaraja it had been a whole hour since we’d eaten. Weak with hunger, we headed to a café.

‘Are you vegetarian?’ everyone asked me anxiously.

A plate of pork cooked in more ways than I could have imagined was set down and my taste buds are still dreaming about it. Fueled up, we were ready to perform.

Team BEWF striding towards the performance night in Singaraja, looking like a writers' fest version of The Beatles.

BEWF has organised a night of performances and panels, interspersed with more amazing parcels of food. The performers are young and insanely talented dancers, singers, actors and speakers from Singaraja. I watch sung poems about grasshoppers, a play by Sonia Piscayanti about what happens when the lion that protects the city escapes, and an intense and heated panel about writing and ethics. I wonder how my performance will go – a 10 minute letter to my 12-year-old self, where I act out some of the parts of Annie and sing ‘Tomorrow, tomorrow, I’ll love ya tomorrow’ in a shaky voice. I only know two words in Balinese. Will everyone understand my English performance? Will they get that my singing is a joke? Ismy dress too short?

The woman sitting next to me is multilingual and has been translating the panel for me. She leans towards me with the program in hand.

‘Oh, I read here that you’ve written a memoir piece about a controversial open relationship and also smeared cat food on your body. How interesting.’

I put my forehead to my knees and laugh. I don’t need to worry about the words or the dress or what I eat or don’t. I’m here amongst the best of emerging Bali and I just need to follow the advice that has been given to me by the BEWF staff:

Sonia: ‘People will get the feeling of your performance, even if they don’t understand all the words.’
Kadek: ‘Don’t cut out the swear words, let them see who your really are.’
BEWF staff: ‘You have to try the poo coffee.’

The MC introduces me. I step onto the stage.

Everyone tells me that smoked duck is the specialty. Someone hand me a cigarette!

The Emerging Writers’ Festival/Bali Emerging Writers International Exchange is supported by the Commonwealth through the Australia Indonesia Institute of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

So, your accommodation on the bed/couch/floor is sorted for your stay and you’ve just arrived in Melbourne. You know exactly what events you want to attend, but how do you get there?

While some of you might have been to Melbourne before and know your way around, it can still be a bit tricky. So here are some handy hints for getting around and about Melbourne during the festival.

1. Walk in the direction of your destination.

Thanks to Robert Hoddle who designed Melbourne in 1837, the city is laid out as a grid, making navigation easy. Once you’re heading in the right direction, you have a much greater chance of finding the venue. Even if you’re walking parallel to the street you need to be on, there’s bound to be a lane or alleyway that you can get through to your desired destination.
This method works extremely well for getting to the Thousand Pound Bend who lives on Little Lonsdale Street, a two-minute walk from The Wheeler Centre.
For best results use Google Maps.

2. Take the tram.

Did you know that Melbourne’s tram system is the biggest in the world? There are 30 tram routes and over 1,700 stops.  Thankfully, you’ll probably only need one or two to get around the city.

Route 1 (East Coburg to South Melbourne Beach) will get you up and down Swanston Street in no time and stops close by the many EWF venues in the CBD. From the Emerging QandA in Federation Square up to The Wheeler Centre for an Industry Insider panel, just jump on the tram and you’ll be there in no time.
It’s also a fun to get on a tram and see where you end up. Often, tram stops are closer together than trains, and go past more places of interest in the city and its surroundings than a bus or train. It’s the perfect way to explore Melbourne.

To do this though, you’ll need a myki card. All 7-Eleven stores, metro train stations and or one of the 800 retail outlets in the Melbourne CBD will sell them. The card itself will cost $6 (adult) or $3 (concession), and then you need to add money to it. It works on a touch-on, touch-off basis. So, you touch on as soon as you get on the tram and touch off for the lowest fair. It’s a somewhat confusing system, so make sure you read this (and watch the video), especially if you’re using multiple forms of transport.

Also, make sure you touch-on using a myki machine and not the old Metcard ones, or a pole. Believe me, it’s very easy to do. You’ll only get pitying smiles or exasperated sighs from your fellow passengers.

For best results use tramTRACKER (and don’t forget that myki card).

A myki reader, onboard a tram.

3. Try the train.

If you’re heading to The Writers’ Retreat at Abbotsford Convent make sure you jump onto Public Transport Victoria’s website to get exact details about your trip. There are many options, including the train that will get you there in less than 20 minutes (if you’re leaving from the CBD). Victoria Park station (on the Epping or Hurstbridge line) is the closest and from there it’s about a 12-minute walk. Metro Trains also use myki, so there’s no need to spend your time in queues buying extra cards. Just make sure you top up with enough money for your fare!

For best results use the PTV app.

A myki machine, where you can top-up and check your credit balance.

Remember, The Victorian Hotel is smack-bang in the centre of town and close to all the city venues. If you haven’t sorted out accommodation already, make sure you check them out. The hotel is a short walk from all public transport options for The Abbotsford Convent and Fitzroy Town Hall, so you shouldn’t have any problems finding your way around. And since it’s so close, you can have a sneaky sleep in after a late night and still make it to your event on time.

Happy EWF Interstaters!

It is with great pleasure that we can announce the names of the 2013 shortlisted writers:

• Phoebe Cannard-Higgins, LaTrobe University
• Alexandra Coghill, Monash University
• Peter Collins, Monash University
• Eric Gardiner, University of Melbourne
• Emily Hitchman, Australian National University
• Emme Hoy, University of Technology, Sydney
• Kallen Johnstone, Deakin University
• Kathleen O’Neill, University of Melbourne
• Leticia Parish, University of Melbourne
• Felicity Pickering, University of Technology, Sydney
• Rebecca Slater, University of Technology, Sydney
• Jacob Sutherland, University of Melbourne
• Lisa Darcy-Lee Tindale, Griffith University
• Prudence Trinca, Monash University
• Jessie Waters, University of Tasmania

Congratulations to all!

Shortlisted writers will receive an invitation to attend our festival event, The Emerging Writer Book Launch, on Thursday 30 May from 6.30pm at Fitzroy Town Hall, where the overall winner will be announced. Up to $5000 is on offer – so it is quite the lucrative prize! Their stories will also be published by Penguin in a Monash Prize collection – last year’s copy is available for purchase if you would like to read.