Want to get out and mingle with wordsmiths, literature lovers and people interested in exploring the creative arts? Then skeddadle along to one of the upcoming events:

Emerging Writers Festival, Melbourne

Like harvest, the Emerging Writers’ Festival celebrates the fact that writers can move from aspiring to doing at any age. And it’s coming up next month.

A weekend of panels, skill sharing workshops and performances including Scrabble (using Paul Kelly’s lyrics for inspiration) the EMF runs from Friday 9 May to Sunday 11 May 2008.  

Venues are at the Melbourne Town Hall and Federation Square and tickets range from single sessions to weekend passes.

For more details about the fesitival, visit the EMF website.

 Sydney Writers’ Festival

The 2008 Sydney Writers Festival is on from 19-25 May, promising a wide range of events including panels, presentations, workshops and performances covering fiction, nonfiction, poetry, journalism, scriptwriting, film, new media and much more.

The idea of vision underpins the 2008 program: “Australia has a new government; the US is in an election year; the immediacy of climate change continues to be impressed upon us: these are just some of the events preoccupying us at this point in time. It is a time of setting targets and goals, of looking backwards to see where we have been as we envision what lies ahead.”

British author Jeanette Winterson OBE will be presenting the SWF opening address entitled GET A BOOK GET A LIFE! how words create meaning will be filled with the insights and passion of her literary work.

Junot Díaz winner of the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for his novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao presents the Festival’s 2008 Closing Address.

For more details, visit the SWF.