Emerging Writers’ Festival Director Sam Twyford-Moore rounds up the best of this year’s fest.

Writers deserve to be as big as rock stars. We’re not quite at the point where there are ridiculous portraits of writers in tight jeans published in street press, or where they are being chased by a crazy mob of fans, but we’re close, and the 2013 Emerging Writers’ Festival program is partly an attempt to give them the credit they are due.

The Emerging Writers’ Festival Opening Night Gala

This is the tenth Emerging Writers’ Festival. On our opening night, we’ll be wishing the festival a very happy tenth birthday and kicking off our celebrations with a special keynote by the ratbag poet Astrid Lorange looking at the next ten years of writing in Australia.

The Writers’ Conference

The Writers’ Conference returns to Melbourne Town Hall and the Ambassadors are back. Our Ambassadors this year are Melinda Harvey, Walter Mason, John Safran, Jennifer Mills and Khairani ‘Okka’ Barokka, who we are bringing out from Indonesia as our International Writer in Residence through the generous support of the Australia-Indonesia Institute.

Words Travel: Australia and Indonesia

In addition to bringing Okka out, we’re sending a writer to the Bali Emerging Writers’ Festival – and it’s exciting to announce that that writer is Laura Jean McKay, whose collection of short stories Holiday in Cambodia will be released in July by Black Inc. In a neat coincidence, the BEWF runs from May 18 – 19, which means Laura will be back in time to report on her experience in Bali at a special event, Words Travel, which will look at the connections between Australia and Indonesia. Words Travel will take place during the Writers’ Conference.

Sweatshop Stories

I moved down from Sydney to take up the reigns of this festival. I was thinking it was going to be a bit of a controversial move seeing as the EWF is such a Melbourne icon, but I’ve been disappointingly embraced. It shouldn’t surprise that I’m bringing some Sydneysiders down with me. Through the support of the University of Western Sydney, we are bringing seven writers from Western Sydney from the Sweatshop Collective, a movement devoted to achieving equality for Western Sydney communities through literacy and critical thinking and one of the most dynamic groups of writers in this country. They’ll be presenting Sweatshop Stories, which they are furiously rehearsing at the moment.

Emerging Q&A

This year sees the return of many festival favourites, including Emerging Q&A, running bigger and better, down at Federation Square’s The Edge. Cheekily timed on a Monday just before Q&A proper, ours is going to be a wide ranging cultural conversation, rather than a back and forth game of political ping pong. Benjamin Law will host, doing his very best Tony Jones impression… if you can get your head around that.

Turns the Words up Loud – A Night of Writing and Music

Turn the Words Up Loud is a live event at the Toff in Town featuring writers who are musicians who might also be writers who might also be musicians. Legendary Dave Graney joins former Frente! frontwoman Angie Hart in a must-see hybrid of writers’ festival panel and late night gig.

The Writers’ Retreat at Abbotsford Convent

I’m most excited to announce that this year we have a major new partner in the Abbotsford Convent Foundation. For our second weekend (June 1 and 2), we’ll be running The Writers’ Retreat. This is a two day program focused around writing and wellbeing, with workshops on yoga, meditation and slow writing, and panels on writing and food, new nature writing and balancing life and writing. This is incredibly unique programming for a writers’ festival and I can’t wait to hear what you think.

As the Abbotsford programming makes clear, the Emerging Writers’ Festival is here of course to support writers, ten years strong with a stellar festival line up to prove it. Writers will be getting paid their dues!

To find out more about the Emerging Writers’ Festival