Workshop: Writing in the Age of Extinction

Catastrophic climate change, mass extinction, and the de-wilding of the world are all inescapable facts of life, so why are they so rarely seen in novels? James Bradley and Jane Rawson drew on their experience of writing eco- and climate-fiction to provide exercises, guidance, and research tips for writing environmentally aware fiction for yourself, in this one day writing workshop.

Participants learned some of the themes, topics and difficulties when you’re writing about the environment; how to research current and future environmental issues; how to build a world based on your research, whether it’s speculative or realist fiction; some ways of writing from other species’ point of view; and where to find other writers working in this space

This workshop was pitched at emerging or established writers, who had a substantial project in the early- to mid-stages of development.

About James Bradley

James Bradley is a writer and critic. His books include the novels Wrack (1997), The Deep Field (1999), The Resurrectionist (2006), and Clade (2015), a book of poetry, Paper Nautilus (1994), The Penguin Book of the Ocean (2010), and most recently, The Change Trilogy (2017-18) for young adults. He has also written extensively about literature and the environment, and in 2012 won the Pascall Prize for Australia’s Critic of the Year.

About Jane Rawson

Jane Rawson has written two novels – A Wrong Turn at the Office of Unmade Lists (2013) and From the Wreck (2017) – and a novella, Formaldehyde (2015). She is the co-author of The Handbook: Surviving and Living with Climate Change (2015). Her short fiction and essays are in Sleepers, Overland, Tincture, Seizure, Griffith Review, Meanjin, and Review of Australian Fiction. She mostly writes about the environment.

Date: July 27, 2019, 10am – 4pm

Where: Detached Performance and Project Space, The Old Mercury Building (TOMB), 91 - 93 Macquarie Street, Hobart, TAS, 7000

Presented by Detached