In 2022, the Discipline of English is hosting the inaugural John Rowe Writers-in-Residence from 5–9 September. Reading and writing contemporary Australian literature is fundamental to understanding and engaging with the major themes and issues shaping Australian lived experience. It is a key activity of English, particularly in Australian Literary Studies and Creative Writing.

The Writers at Work series presented by the Discipline of English at the University of Sydney invites writers to consider: What kinds of labour are entailed in literary production and publication? What does it mean to describe oneself, or be described, as a writer? Who does a writer work for and what processes produce the literary work as we encounter it?

Join us for a collaborative exploration of what it means to love through the troubling of books – books that are difficult to read or even to approach, that trouble our reading, writing, and our archives. Quinn and Francesca will be in-conversation about their collaborative writing practice of making and re-making utopian and dystopian books through a variety of methods – desire-lines, trust, black out text, erasure, cutting up, interventions, the aside, marginalia, call-and-response, poetic exchange, sending and receiving. Imagine a root book, a book of love. Here is love here is yes here is coming to the page, to the texts that trouble us.

This is a hybrid event. Please register as places are limited. Register for either Zoom or in-person here.

as part of INAUGURAL JOHN ROWE WRITERS-IN-RESIDENCE

‘Writing Bodies and Lives’

5-9 SEPTEMBER 2022