Brisbane Children’s Writers Festival 2022
A one-day festival jam-packed with workshops, competitions with prizes, and fun activities for writers in Grades 7-12.
Brisbane Children’s Writers Festival is a one-day event jam-packed with workshops, competitions with prizes, and fun activities for young writers in Grades 7-12. This year’s theme is Dreams - explore your creative potential!
Schedule
9:00 - Festival Welcome: Including Acknowledgement of Country with Yvette Henry Holt, Chairperson of First Nations Australia Writers Network (FNAWN).
9:30 am - 3:30 pm - Workshop Rotations: Join in exciting workshops with other writers your age! Everyone will get the chance to immerse in each of our featured workshops, rotating across the day of the Festival.
Workshops:
Imagination Olympics - Jump into this fast-moving workshop where teams compete against each other to build a story. Presented by Lian Tanner, award-winning author of the best-selling Keepers trilogy.
Poetry in Pyjamas - Yvette Henry Holt, comedienne/award-winning poet of the Bidjara, Yiman and Wakaman nations of Queensland, invites you into this safe space of freedom in poetic choice: imaginative freedom is unleashed, and fun is first and foremost. Use your senses to uncover truth and overlook the obvious.
Dreaming in Pictures - Explore the creative storytelling potential of pictures, imagery and illustration. Intensive and fast-paced, illustrator Rowan Campbell and author Jemma Pollari blend the power of words and images to inspire you with tools to tell your story in a compelling way.
Chillout Zone - Create entries for our on-the-day Microfiction and Poetry, In Their Shoes, and Story in Pictures competitions. Get hands-on with badge-making, sticker-making, freewriting and producing Bitsy interactive stories. Go beyond, extend, and generate new worlds from your imagination.
3:30 pm - Exhibition Tour: Join us for a tour of what the Queensland Cultural Centre precinct has to offer!
4:10 pm - Awards: Celebrate your writing work: includes presentation of Festival awards for our on-the-day competitions and more.
4:30 pm - Pick up
Satellite events
Plus, gear up for Brisbane Children's Writers Festival with these 'satellite' youth writing events on Saturday 1 October - discounted bookings available for Festival ticketholders.
World of Wonder Young Explorers tour and creative writing workshop
When: 10:30am, Saturday 1 October - Where: Museum of Brisbane, Level 3, City Hall
As part of Brisbane Children’s Writers Festival and in partnership with Queensland Writers Centre, Museum of Brisbane welcomes students in grades 7–12 to participate in this pre-Festival event - a very special tour of current exhibition World of Wonder: Margot McKinney.
Turning Everyday Life Into Creative Writing with Ellen Wengert
When: 2:00pm, Saturday 1 October - Where: Queensland Writers Centre
This workshop will teach you how to mine your everyday life for writing material and how to weave a common thread through the tidbits you collect. Learn how to turn even the most boring true story into fiction or creative non-fiction that entertains, amuses, and provokes thought.
Queensland Writers Centre Youth Membership
In partnership with Express Media, our Youth Membership provides support and development opportunities for young Queensland writers.
Brisbane Children's Writers Festival is free for all of our Youth Members. To become a Youth Member, visit our website to sign up and find out more, or choose the Youth Membership + Free Admission ticket option to get membership and secure your place at the festival at the same time.
Brisbane Children’s Writers Festival presenters
Lian Tanner is the author of twelve children’s novels and one picture book. Her best-selling Keepers trilogy won two Aurealis Awards for Best Australian Children's Fantasy and has been translated into eleven languages. She won the 2020 NSW Premier's Award for Children’s Literature, and the 2021 Davitt Award for Best Australian Children’s Crime Novel.
Yvette Henry Holt is an Aboriginal Australian poet, essayist, academic, researcher and comedienne, of the Bidjara, Yiman and Wakaman nations of Queensland. Her first published collection of poetry won multiple awards and her work has been anthologised and translated into several languages both in print and online. Born in Brisbane, Yvette lives and works in the desert of Central Australia and is the Chairperson of First Nations Australia Writers Network.
Rowan Campbell is a freelance illustrator, poet and writer who works on cover illustration, independently published zines, and regularly exhibits at art conventions. He has a focus on faerie, forest and folkloric illustrations, and loves celebrating diversity and inclusion within his work. He's almost finished a Master of Creative and Professional Writing and is looking forward to scurrying up a mountain to hibernate on a grassy hillside once it's all complete.
Jemma Pollari has been a secondary teacher since 2010 and has recently joined the Queensland Writers Centre as project officer, bringing her expertise in education and enthusiasm for helping young people find the joy in writing. She is a published author, holds a BaSciComm (Hons), GradDipEd (Secondary) and a MEd, and lives on the Sunshine Coast with her family.
EVENT PARTNERS & SPONSORS
For more information about Queensland Writers Centre’s Program of Events and answers to FAQs, please visit: www.queenslandwriters.org.au/program-info