Event Archive
2018 Stella Prize winning author Alexis Wright in conversation with publisher and critic Ivor Indyk on 24 October 2014.
Selected Past Events
Another World in This One: Gerald Murnane’s Fiction 7 December 2017
A one day workshop, Another World in This One: Gerald Murnane’s Fiction, will take place in the small Victorian town of Goroke as part of the ‘Dialogues’ theme of the project.
Antipodean China Workshop 23-24 November 2017
An occasion for writers, translators and scholars from China, Australia and elsewhere to reflect together on questions that are central to the Other Worlds research project, namely what presence does China, or Chinese literature, have in the work or imagination of writers in Australia, including Indigenous writers?
The 4th China Australia Literary Forum 7-11 May 2017
The fourth China Australia Literary Forum (CALF) took place in Guangzhou China. It continued a process of literary exchange between Chinese and Australian writers.
Historical Poetics Symposium 13-15 December 2016
A symposium that examines how the individual poem presents challenges both for a historical understanding of poetic form and for a formalist understanding of poetry's history.
Coetzee's Other Worlds 7 December 2016
A workshop on the aspects of J. M. Coetzee's texts that evade, transcend or openly resist the imposition of national frameworks.
Radical Literature 6 November 2015
Renowned anthropologist Ghassan Hage and award-winning author Michael Mohammed Ahmad on White Fantasies and Arab Fictions. Anarchist poet П. O. in conversations with critic Ivor Indyk.
China Australia Literary Forum 28-29 August 2015
The China Australia Literary Forum provides a rare and exciting opportunity for authors from the two countries to meet, exchange ideas and experiences and to develop a deeper understanding of our respective literary worlds.
The Endlessness of Ending: Samuel Beckett and the Mind Conference 29-30 June 2015
Samuel Beckett's work across the genres has always shown a keen interest in both the topography and the function of the mind. The experience of interiority in Beckett is complex and it is often on the brink of its own collapse.
Poetic Craft and White-Settler Colonialism
13-14 September 2013. This workshop brought together eminent Australian and South African poets and critics to consider how poets in societies with a white settler history think about their world through their poetry making.
Australia India Literatures International Forum
4-6 September 2012. Ten of India's most acclaimed regional writers and two major publishers will travel to Australia to participate in a high calibre literary forum organised by the Writing and Society Research Centre.
The Scene of the Crime
27 June 2012. Centre members Matt McGuire and Sara Knox organised this symposium on the relationship between crime fiction and representations of space.
Sydney Writers' Festival 2012
16 May 2012. An Event hosted The Writing and Society Research Centre for the Sydney Writers' Festival. We presented two distinguished international guests, Chinese author Sheng Keyi and Icelandic poet and novelist Sjón who both spoke on the subject of Place and Displacement.
MCA Discussions: Marking Time
31 March, 1 April 2012. To coincide with the Museum of Contemporary Art's reopening exhibition Marking Time The Sydney Consortium and the MCA presented two panel discussions featuring artists from the exhibition and special guest scholars.
Modernism, Intimacy & Emotion
6 - 7 February 2012. Australian Modernist Studies Network Symposium 2012. Since the special Critical Inquiry issue on 'Intimacy' edited by Lauren Berlant in 1998, there has been an increasing interest in the relationship between emotion and the aesthetic. This conference explores the role of intimacy and emotion in modernist studies.
Rabindranath Tagore’s Gora
9 December 2011. A seminar by Writing and Society postdoctoral research fellow Mridula Nath Chakraborty. Her paper 'Indian' skin deep: or How the Nation Came Home in Rabindranath Tagore's Gora' was recorded by ABC Radio National's Big Ideas. This event's page contains links to listen to, or download an audio file of Mridula's paper.
Writers and Writing in the New Media Culture
22 November 2011. A one day seminar and workshop featuring author and artist Mark Amerika discussing ideas from his recent publication remixthebook and a practical workshop in new media writing with eminent digital and hypermedia poet and artist Jason Nelson.
China Australia Literary Forum
29 August – 2 September 2011. Ten prominent Chinese writers visited Sydney for in-depth discussions with Australian authors, and those involved in the translation and reception of their works, as part of a China Australia Literary Forum hosted by the Writing and Society Research Centre.
Spinoza's Atheist God
17 May 2011. An event organized by Writing and Society's Dimitris Vardoulakis and featuring renowned Spinoza scholar Beth Lord. This event was recorded by ABC Radio National's Big Ideas program. Audio of the event is available for listening and download.
Literary Translation Symposium
1 October – 2 October 2010. This event gathered leading practitioners and theorists of literary translation from Australia and overseas to consider the current state of the field. Audio recordings of this event are available for download.
Being Bengali International Collaborations Workshop
20 August 2010. The workshop provided historical and contemporary understandings of Bengaliness that further research into the crisis of identity-politics of this eclectic ethno-linguistic category.