New Zealand's creative writing under discussion at conference

Published by the Communications and Development Department

 

6 August 2003

 

The condition and directions of New Zealand literature will be under discussion at a creative writers’ conference organised by the University’s English Department and the University Bookshop.

 

Creative Writing in New Zealand will be held 22-24 August at the UBS on campus and at the Our City building in the city.

 

In 1951 a Writer’s Conference was held at Canterbury University College attracting a number of well-known and fledgling writers including a young James K Baxter.

 

Fifty-two years later Creative Writing in New Zealand will look at where New Zealand literature is now.

 

Conference organiser Associate Professor Mark Williams (English) says the current debates about New Zealand writing exist in a very different context from 1951.

“Now a Government sympathetic to the arts seeks to promote a positive sense of citizenship through the promotion of culture. Yet the new climate of State support for literature has not resolved all the contentious issues in the literary scene.”

 

The conference will consider the role of State funding, the limits of cultural policy, and the place of nationalism in creative activity. It will look closely and critically at the rise of creative writing programmes in universities, arguments about globalisation, at directions for Maori writing, and the status of children’s literature.

 

Contributers and speakers include Owen Marshall, Elizabeth Knox, Iain Sharp, Brian Turner, Margaret Mahy, Patrick Evans and Gregory O’Brien.

 

“This is not another festival offering samples of work from our prominent writers, nor is it an earnest academic conference. It is an opportunity to both celebrate and question a literature that is increasingly self-confident yet still in the making,” Associate Professor Williams says.

 

Canterbury University Press intends publishing a book from the conference.

 

For full programme details and registration contact:
Gillian Newman
University Bookshop
University of Canterbury
Christchurch
Ph 03 364-2043 (ext. 3777)
Email: gillian@ubscan.co.nz