Australian Short Story Festival 2021

Barry took part in two panel discussions at last year’s Australian Short Story Festival from Adelaide. COVID restrictions meant that participants and attendees from interstate and overseas could not be there in person, and sessions had a Zoom component.

Masculinity with Wayne Marshall, Barry Lee Thompson and Dominic Carew was on Saturday 6 November 2021.

Writing The Family with Barry Lee Thompson and Katherine Tamiko Arguile was on Sunday 7 November 2021.

Video recordings of both sessions are below:

Masculinity with Wayne Marshall, Barry Lee Thompson and Dominic Carew | Saturday 6 November 2021
Writing The Family with Barry Lee Thompson and Katherine Tamiko Arguile | Sunday 7 November 2021

For the full selection of ASSF 2021 videos, visit the YouTube link here. The ASSF website says these videos will be available till July, so they may be taken down by the end of this week.

Happy watching!

EW

Chamber Poets lives again

Helen has been busy recently, happily reconnecting with a cultural and literary community that disappeared two years ago, “leaving many poets and writers of a much-loved spoken word event quite bereft”. Chamber Poets attracts poets from Melbourne and regional Victoria, and will be held every second Saturday of the month from 1pm–4.30pm in the Woodend RSL (Returned & Services League) in the Macedon ranges. For more information about Chamber Poets, visit the following link:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/ChamberPoets

The July event this Saturday 9th will feature three poets: Angela Costi, Grant Caldwell and Claire Gaskin, who are launching An Embroidery of Old Maps and New; blue balloon (Collective Effort Press); and Eurydice Speaks and Ismene’s Survivable Resistance respectively. 

All are welcome to come along and listen to some of Australia’s leading poets and to share their own poems, perhaps written in isolation, that just now might be ready to go out into the world.


Here Helen shares with us her delight at being at the return of the Chamber Poets held in June:

“It’s been a long road for all writers since you-know-what sent us all scurrying indoors, doomed to an artistic life played out on Zoom with its intermittent freezes, loss of audio and anxiety-making meetings, seminars and classes. Needs must.

So many books/collections were written and launched into this weird cybersphere. But happily, writers are emerging from their imposed cocoons, and book launches are at last taking place with live, wildly enthusiastic audiences. So it was that after a hiatus of two years, the Victorian regional Chamber Poets returned triumphantly on June 11th to Woodend, with the largest audience in the group’s history. There were three book launches, plus an open mic section and entertainment by the funky and humorous Black Forest Smoke band, and much-lauded local choir The Woodend Warblers. 

Chamber Poets founder Myron Lysenko’s and Alice Wanderer’s haiku poetry collections – a ghost gum leans over and Lips Licked Clean – were launched along with Kevin Brophy’s latest poetry collection, In This Part of the World.

Inspired by the beautiful readings from each poet, some 20 people hungry for spoken word took to the open mic with their diverse and eclectic styles of poetry.”

Reading: San Fedele Press | 12 June 2022 @ 2pm EST (US), on Zoom

Our friends at San Fedele Press in the USA are having a literary reading this weekend: Sunday 12 June at 2pm EST (US), on Zoom. All the Elwood Writers were fortunate to be able to attend the last SFP event, an ice-cream social where Helen and Barry were among contributors reading their work from the 2021 edition of American Writers Review.

We’d like to say we’ll be attending this weekend’s event, but with the time difference between the eastern seaboard of the US and Australia, we’d have to be firing up our computers at 4am on Monday. But you never know. Anyway, fingers crossed that the event’s being recorded again, so we can keep an eager eye out for the video.

Details, including a handy Zoom link, below:

On Zoom, Sunday, June 12 at 2 p.m. EST.

Highlighting American Writers Review contributors:
Gale Martin, “The Year of Cortisol”
Dr. Joel Savishinski, “Toilet Paper Panic”
Ana M. Fores Tamayo, in English and Spanish, “New Day Dawn/El amanecer”

Following the readings, there will be a Q & A.


To join, click on the link below:
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/89951562488?pwd=aE1UaXhQUXpMMEsvbDV6QTlFVU9CZz09
Meeting ID: 899 5156 2488
Passcode: 257657

More information at https://www.americanwritersreview.com/ or email info@sanfedelepress.com
San Fedele Press

San Fedele Press: The Second Ice Cream Social | reviewed by Jennifer Bryce

Most of us here in Australia were sipping coffee rather than eating ice cream when we logged into the Ice Cream Social at 7.30 am Eastern Australian Daylight Time on Sunday 31st October – it was 4.30 pm Saturday in New Jersey. Patricia A. Florio, the founding publisher of American Writers Review, was a most welcoming convenor.

Continue reading “San Fedele Press: The Second Ice Cream Social | reviewed by Jennifer Bryce”