Overview
The guest writers will give free talks on Saturday and Sunday of
Back to Booktown.
They will also be available to sign copies of their books.
A full program will be released in March 2010.
WRITEBreak ... because you deserve it.
Friday 30th April
9.30 am - 6.00 pm Cost $180
Sponsored by Victorian Writers Centre, Ballarat Council Arts and Cultural Development Unit, Creative Clunes and Hepburn Shire
WriteBreak is set in the heart of the historic
To Book Your Place
Price per Seat (incl GST) in AU$:
Number of Places still available:
The perfect Locations to stir your Creativity
The Clunes Bowling Club takes you back in time to the 1950s. It is surrounded by large autumn trees and a nearby creek, a botanic park and is only a few steps away from the village.
The Clunes Golf Club is set in a bush setting, wallabies graze on the golf fairways and birds fill the air with song.
Small Groups
The group will be no larger than 25 so there will be plenty of opportunities to ask your questions and to network.
Free Places
Two free places are available to residents of Ballarat Council, another two places to residents of Hepburn Shirte and a further two places to residents of Clunes or those with a 3370 postcode.
To win one of these places please send no more than 100 words saying why you should be given one of the places and how it will assist your career or skills development to Creative Clunes PO Box 287, Clunes, 3370. Or email booktown@clunes.org
Entries close 5 pm Friday April 9th.
The Workshops
(Note, the order of workshops can change)
9.30-11.00 Stefan Laszczuk
'Truth in Fiction'. The workshop explores some of the challenges involved in deciding just how much you should use of your own (and other people's) true lives within your fictional narrative.
11.30 -1.00 Margaret Simons
'Fiction in Truth'. When writing an autobiography or the narrative of an event how can history be shaped to create a narrative which is at once enjoyable to read and also historically faithful?
1.30- 3.00
'Keeping it Real and Honest.' An essential ingredient in any narrative is the necessity to know your environment and your emotional relationship to that environment, and to write with as much honesty as you can muster.
3.30 - 5.00
'It's all Done with Mirrors'. The workshop explores the writer as the radical, the magician and unravels the tricks and slight of hand of writing a publishable book.
5.00 - 6.00 Drinks with the Writers
The Guest Writer-Tutors
Our Writer-Tutors are all top writers who are experienced educators. They will be sharing with you the knowledge about writing and publishing that they have acquired over the years. WriteBreak is a unique opportunity to spend time getting to know these writers and the writing-publishing process.
Nigel Krauth
Nigel Krauth is a multi-award winning novelist. He has won the Australian/Vogel Literary Award and the NSW Sate Literary Award for Fiction (The Christina Stead Prize) and was shortlisted for the Age Book of the Year Award. His books include Matilda, My Darling (co-winner of the Australian/Vogel Literary Award), The Bathing-Machine Called the Twentieth Century, JF Was Here (winner of the New South Wales State Literary Award), and Freedom Highway. He is a regular reviewer for the Australian literary pages, runs the Griffith University creative writing course, co-edits the international journal TEXT and has been a member of the judging panels of many of Australia's top literary awards.
Nigel Krauth's web page
Stefan Laszczuk
Stefan Laszczuk's latest novel I Dream of Magda won the 2007 The Australian/Vogel Literary Award and was praised by The Age as 'astonishingly humorous and assured'.
His first novel, The Goddamn Bus of Happiness, was the winner of the South Australia Festival of Literature Award for an unpublished manuscript and was published by Wakefield Press in 2004 .
His collection of short stories The New Cage won the S.A Writers' Centre Short Story Award in 2002. He has also had his work published in various anthologies. He completed a PhD in Creative Writing at the University of Adelaide in 2009 and is currently working on another novel and co-writing a play.
Margaret Simons
Margaret Simons is an award-winning freelance journalist and the author of seven books and numerous essays and articles. She is also a part-time lecturer at Swinburne University of Technology.
Her most recent work includes The Content Makers - Understanding the Future of the Australian Media (2007), and Faith, Money and Power - What the Religious Revival Means for Politics (2007).
Simons has been a finalist in the 2007 Walkley Awards for her essay Buried in the Labyrinth, published by Griffith Review. Her other works include the prize-winning examination of the Hindmarsh Island bridge affair, The Meeting of the Waters, (2003). She also wrote Latham's World, an investigation into the then Leader of the Opposition, Mark Latham, published in the lead up to the 2004 federal election.
Simons has just published the official biography of Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser with University of Melbourne Press .

Arnold Zable
Arnold Zable is an award winning writer, storyteller, educator, and human rights advocate. His books include Jewels and Ashes, (1991) which won five Australian literary awards, and depicts his journey to
Zable is the author of numerous feature articles, columns, short stories, reviews and essays. His work regularly appears in The Age and a range of journals. Zable speaks and writes with passion about memory and history, displacement and community. He has conducted numerous writing workshops and has been a visiting lecturer in creative writing at Deakin, Melbourne, Monash, RMIT, La Trobe and
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