23rd Annual Conference

Peripheral Visions

Australasian Association of Writing Programs 23rd Annual Conference

28–30 November 2018

Perth, Western Australia

“… write long enough and hard enough into the space past waking or attention and you find yourself unspooling …” Ander Monson, Letter to a Future Lover

To register for the event, visit the Official conference website

Update: the deadline for abstracts has been extended to 13 July!

Every creative expression shares a vision. Whether writers are looking from, looking towards, looking askance, looking away, or looking over, writing beckons us to the periphery and asks, ‘Where to now?’.

The location of the 2018 annual conference of the AAWP in the western reaches of the continent has inspired our theme. And we are delighted to announce that Kim Scott, award-winning novelist and Professor of Writing, will be our keynote speaker.

We invite presentations — from pedagogy, research, and practice in creative or professional writing, editing and publishing — that explore or excavate these different ways of writing beyond and outside the obvious, enabling alternative worlds, ideas, or truths to emerge. Presentation themes may be drawn from (but are not limited to) the following:

  • Edgy or experimental writing
  • Borders, genres, and their limits
  • Indigenous visions
  • Writing from the edge/below
  • Minority writing (eg disability, LGBTIQ, Refugee…)
  • Reading/writing through a different lens
  • Writing from the regions
  • Writing for performance
  • Collaborative writing
  • Interdisciplinarity
  • Ambiguity or ambivalence
  • Out of sight
  • The looming; the unavoidable; the obstructive
  • Glimpsing futures
  • Alternative approaches — sneaking up on the difficult or divisive
  • Peripheral visions of the exegesis
  • Resisting tunnel vision; beyond bias.

Proposals for individual papers, panels and alternative formats are all welcome, as we hope to produce a program which speaks to the conference theme in both form and content. Proposals may be a work of scholarship on or about creative practice, or one engaging with the conference theme in any way or may be a creative work which incorporates a scholarly framework to be presented along with the creative element. Individual papers will be 20 minutes long; panels may be 60–90 minutes long. Proposed papers will not be subject to peer review. Instead, participants will have the opportunity to submit presented papers to a peer-reviewed journal special edition—further details will follow. Postgraduates are particularly encouraged to submit to the conference and a postgrad masterclass will be held on the afternoon prior to the conference (27 November)—more information soon.

Proposals (max 200 words) should be submitted to AAWPConf18@curtin.edu.au by 13 July 2018. Please use ‘CFP: AAWP2018’ as the subject line.  Queries to: R.Robertson@curtin.edu.au.

Peripheral Visions (AAWP Conference 2018) is a joint initiative of Curtin University, Edith Cowan University, Murdoch University and the University of Western Australia.