Writing & Society Research Centre - Celebrating 20 Years - Conversations, Literary Readings and Lunch

Join us for a half-day symposium reflecting on the history, achievements and legacies of the Writing and Society Research Centre. Bringing together past and current Centre members, Directors, and postgraduate students alongside authors from our creative communities, the symposium will celebrate the evolving role the Centre has played in shaping the literary, scholarly and cultural ecologies of Western Sydney, and in forging links among national and international writers and researchers.

Our panellists will consider the Centre’s highlights and hazards, reflecting on lessons from two decades in which its flagship research and publishing ventures, including the Sydney Review of Books and Giramondo, have come to lead the national public debate about literature and its value. Looking ahead, our speakers will consider the changing and often volatile artistic, digital, political and scholarly contexts of our times. The symposium will address how these might continue to shape the Centre, asking what role WSRC can play in supporting future literary, creative, student and research communities.

With this spirit of learning from the past and envisioning a future, WSRC’s 20-year symposium invites all attendees to join in celebrating literature as a vital expression of imagination and new knowledges, and as an engine of social transformation.

PROGRAM - PANELS, LITERARY READINGS AND LUNCH

• 9:30am: Welcome and Acknowledgement of Country (Welcome Kate Fagan; Acknowledgement Matt Wildig)

• 10:00am: Conversation - Foundations with Ivor Indyk, Gail Jones, Chris Andrews, Anthony Uhlmann and Sara Knox (chaired by Kate Fagan)

• 10:45am: Morning Tea 

• 11:15am: Conversation - Evolutions with Felicity Castagna, James Jiang, Jason Tuckwell, Ben Etherington and Aisha Makhdoom (chaired by Anne Jamison)

• 12:00pm: Lunch with Literary Readings by George Haddad, Matt Wildig, Tiffany Tsao, Helen Koukoutsis, Luke Carman and Huyen Hac Helen Tran (chaired by Melinda Jewell).