A love of all things literary will attract more than 100 people to Wagga Wagga in early July for a three-day conference.

 

Hosted by Charles Sturt University (CSU), the Association for the Study of Australian Literature (ASAL) Country Conference 2013 will be held in the regional NSW city from Wednesday 3 to Friday 5 July.

 

Conference organiser Mr David Gilbey, from the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at CSU in Wagga Wagga, said, “My call for papers to be presented at the Conference resulted in a bountiful and enthusiastic response. I received nearly 100 proposals from across Australia and internationally.

 

“From established academics, to researchers, scholars, students, teachers and librarians – they are all coming to the city,” Mr Gilbey said. “They will discuss a whole range of literary topics including poetry, contemporary Indigenous writing, prose fiction, 19^th Century studies, environmental and aesthetic interlinks and trans-Tasman critiques.

 

“I had to fit a fourth discussion strand into the official Conference program to accommodate the rich literary interest in the event.”

 

The Conference official opening, from 6pm on Tuesday 2 July at the Wagga Wagga Civic Theatre, will feature award-winning author Professor Brian Castro from Adelaide University who will give the Barry Andrews Memorial Lecture, Writing Country: Lightning, Agony and Vertigo. Read more on CSU News here.

 

The opening will also see the announcement of the prestigious 2013 ALS Gold Medal for Australian Literature and the Walter McCrae-Russell Award for Australian Literary Scholarship.

 

Two other keynote speakers will address the conference:  Wiradjuri woman and author Dr Jeanine Leane from the Australian National University, who will deliver the Dorothy Green Memorial Lecture from 1.30pm to 2.30p on Wednesday 3 July at the Convention Centre at CSU in Wagga Wagga; and author of The Postcolonial Eye Associate Professor Alison Ravenscroft from LaTrobe University, who will deliver the lecture Utopia from 1.30pm to 2.30pm on Thursday 4 July at the same venue.

 

The Conference involves a series of literary panels and discussions in the University’s Convention Centre from 9am Wednesday 3 July to 4.30pm Friday 5 July.  

 

The public is welcome to attend the event with casual rates to the literary sessions and entertainment available.

 

Sessions include CSU Senior Lecturer in English and author Dr Mark Macleod, who will head up a panel on children’s literature, and Dr Keri Glastonbury from the University of Newcastle, who will do the same for poetry, poetics and creative writing.

 

The full ASAL Conference program can be found on the ASAL website here. Go to the Home tab and scroll down.