The Thousands

Brisbane Emerging Writers Festival is calling bullshit on the idea that writing is dying. Just because there are a million trade paperbacks of bad fauxmance written by your Aunt Maude who read this and decided to litter the shelves of your local council library, doesn’t mean writing is dead.

The best thing about writing is that you don’t have to be anything. If you want to write a Bret Easton-Ellis style novel based on your real life lived vicariously through him, you can. If you want to write about the sensitivities of the outback, feel free. Sure, the internet might make things a little watered down in terms of literary genius, but the young blood among Brisbane’s emerging writers are here to prove literary genius can still exist.

BEWF features both a Digital Writers Conference (where speakers will debase any of your ideas about internet platforms being pissweak), with speakers like Alex Adsett, Andrew McMillan, Jason Nelson and many more, along with a session on writers writing on writing (bookings essential). Oh, and a Spelling Bee at Jam Jar! Hope you have the dictionary tattooed on your brain. Head along, if not just to be inspired to work against remorsefully bland chick lit. Sorry Aunt Maude.