It's that time of year again! Festival season is closer to September, but we do have a trickle of festivals at this end of the year, scaffolded mostly by Emerging Writers' Festival in May and Digital Writers' Festival kicking off later in the week. Both are pretty great, with diverse programs, and I look forward to seeing EWF's in the next few months, but for now, let's check out DWF's.
WEDNESDAY 11 FEBRUARY
Early Words: what do I look for in a first chapter has a pretty great line up of talent, from Text Publishers editors to Freshly Squeezed talking about, well, what they look for in a first chapter. This is pretty essential viewing for anyone working on a longform work and should be pretty educational and compelling.
Writers' Night School: screenwriting for the YouTube generation. Screenwriting! Webseries!
FRIDAY 13 FEBRUARY
#blasphemy! Free speech in the Asia Pacific is an interesting topic, but it's backed by some really compelling voices in Australian writing, including Andre Dao and Eleanor Jackson (her poem with Betsy Turcott She Stole My Every Rock and Roll is one of my favourites).
SATURDAY 14 FEBRUARY
Dedicated: Australian writers get romantic looks like a hell of a lot of fun. Plus what better way to spend Valentines Day?
SUNDAY 15 FEBRUARY
Trapped Inside the Computer: an interview inside a videogame. I'm generally quite interested in narrative and writing around videogames and interactive storytelling, so this one's pretty high up on my list to check out. It should be good for anyone interested in different mediums of writing too.
Interactive Archive sounds pretty darn compelling too. The project currently seems pretty ambiguous, but a live, multimedia narrative event is often something to bookmark.
MONDAY 16 FEBRUARY
Why Writers Should Learn to Code and How to Get Started. Programming fundamentals for non-programmers! It's always a good idea to equip yourself with skills, no matter how relevant or irrelevant they might seem to your job. As our world becomes more and more digital too, being able to code, or at least understand, will become more of a necessary skill. This looks like a pretty great starting point for that.
TUESDAY 17 FEBRUARY
DWF X Pozible: Writers' New Age Toolkit - community, crowdfunding and commercialisation. Neil Gaiman said at World Fantasy last year that Kickstarter is now the third largest publisher of graphic novels. The reality and implications of crowdfunding these days is enormous, so this session is an excellent one for rounding out any writer's knowledge in the program.
WEDNESDAY 18 FEBRUARY
Livejournal / Liejournal sounds like a lot of fun, and should be based on the talent. Michelle Law and Elizabeth Flux are always great
THURSDAY 19 FEBRUARY
Publishing on the Feed: social media as a publishing platform is posing a really interesting question and one that opens up a conversation on the way we engage with writing and publishing. Plus Patrick Lenton's always
SUNDAY 22 FEBRUARY
Data Journalism. I don't know much about it, but hoboy, data is something I totally love.
There are a few other programs worth checking out. I love the 20 Minute Cities stream which takes us through the International Cities of Literature. It's cultural tourism at it's most accessible.White Night: a magazine in a night seems very cool, but is something we've seen before with if:book Australia's 24 Hour Book and The Lifted Brow's issue produced at Melbourne Writers Festival. That said, it's a compelling project and different enough to hopefully further these conversations around the constraints of creative output and input.
All and all, a pretty cool program! You can check out the whole thing over at the website.
