THE MACQUARIE GROUP FOUNDATION LONGLINES PROGRAM 2009
For the last year of the LongLines Program, Varuna brings you a sizzling range of opportunities.
Deadline is April 30 (with the exception of the The Australian Poetry Centre LongLines Workshop, which is June 30).
Application fee is $30, and residential fees of $275 include all food and accommodation.
And these are the opportunities:
* LongLines New Australian Film Stories Workshop.
How would your novel/story/book published, unpublished, or just carefully worked out work on the screen? We all know about the crisis in the Australian film industry does your work tell a new Australian story? Five writers with a promising story with potential for the screen will have the opportunity to work with Blackheath firm Ink-to-Screen, to consider the special requirements of the screen story and to explore the processes of the journey from ink to screen.
Send us a pitch showing us the elements of your book/story that would give it a compelling presence on the screen, plus either your published work or 5,000 words of projected work. This is a six night residential workshop, 5 places.
* The Playlab LongLines Drama Workshop, October 26-31.
The partnership with Playlab and its links to the best dramaturgs in the industry offers an extraordinary opportunity for playwrights - three playwrights will be chosen to work at Varuna with two highly experienced dramaturgs. This is a six-night residential workshop, 3 places.
* Australian Poetry Centre LongLines Workshop is from October 5-11.
The four poets selected for the Workshop will also be the four poets published in the 2009 New Poets Program. The poets from the 2008 workshop will be published in April 2009 and launched at the Sydney Writers Festival in Katoomba May 17. We thank the Myer Foundation for their generous support of this program.
NB: Deadline for this program only is June 30. This is a six-night residential workshop, 4 places.
* And for prose writers and poets and maybe illustrators or storytellers there is the Different Voices Workshop with Creative Director Peter Bishop, October 12-18. Peter is looking for those voices that are telling stories that may not always find a place in the world of commercial publishing.
Regional Australia is full of those voices, and bringing them to the notice of publishers is one of the major achievements of the LongLines Program.
This is a six night residential workshop, 5 places.
* Writers with a publication or production record (not necessarily a large one) may apply for LongLines Community Writing Week, to take place at Varuna, October 19-26.
Five writers, across all genres, will be selected for a week-long residency at Varuna, with a mixture of time designated for their own writing and time for engaging with writers who are working in the Blue Mountains.
This program is for writers who understand that conversation and community are the water and compost of writing practice. At Varuna, writers work during the day, and in the evenings there¹s conversation and the give and take of ideas about writing purpose and writing practice. During this week, up to ten writers from the Blue Mountains will have a working week, working independently during the day and joining the LongLines writers for three evenings of discussion as well as a Saturday afternoon reading. No workshops just work practice! This is a seven night residency, 5 places.
LONGLINES NON-RESIDENTIAL WRITER CONVERSATION PROGRAM
The Writer Conversation is a new Varuna program. We invite you into the company of friends who think and breathe and above all talk writing. There are five of us; Peter Bishop, Helen Barnes-Bulley and Carol Major in the Blue Mountains, and Julie Gittus and Janet Galbraith in Central Victoria.
Conversation isn't instruction or mentorship, and certainly it isn't evaluation, assessment or judgement. From long experience we know that writing a book is an organic process, and that conversation and community are water and compost. We know from each other the value of the perceptive word at the appropriate time and we know that misguided feedback, however well intentioned, can be toxic.
The LongLines Non-Residential Writer Conversation Program offers writers the opportunity to have their manuscript as much as is available read by one member of the Writer Conversation. The reader will discuss it with at least one other member before having an hour long conversation with you.
This is a regular Varuna service (go to www.varuna.com.au), available to all writers at $295, but only $100 for the 10 writers selected for the LongLines Program.