As well as our tutored courses, Arvon offers retreats designed to allow you the time and space to focus on your writing.
NEW: We have just launched a dedicated Writers Retreat at The Clockhouse, in the grounds of The Hurst, our Shropshire centre.
We now have three types of retreats: Lumb Bank, The Hurst and Totleigh Barton
The Hurst
Check out the website for all the
information you need!
It appears that I have exhausted every avenue for publication for my novel The Ozone Cafe, baring of course vanity publishing which is costly. I intend to produce a .pdf version and make the work available for download + cost. I will be posting more details of this later!
Are you an Australian or New Zealand writer with a fiction manuscript ready for submission.
Welcome to Walker Wednesday! UPDATE: Thank you to everyone who has submitted to the first
Walker Wednesday! We will be accepting manuscripts again on 7th of
December. Walker Books, the leading children’s books publisher in Australia and
New Zealand, is now accepting YA and middle-grade submissions from all
published and unpublished writers on the first Wednesday of each month (AEST). We are looking for YA/MG manuscripts with strong writing, engaging
characters and well-developed world-building. We are open to YA/MG of
all genres, but are particularly interested in submissions with diverse
characters and/or written by diverse authors. Submission Guidelines Please email a 1-page cover letter and the first 50 pages of your manuscript as a Word document to WalkerWednesdays@walkerbooks.com.au The subject line of your email should say “Walker Wednesdays Submission” and include the title of your manuscript. Your cover letter must include: • A few lines about yourself. Have you been published before? Why did you write this story? • A synopsis of the manuscript. • The word count of the full manuscript. • Your thoughts on the manuscript’s position in the market. What are some similar books or authors? If you follow the guidelines and your manuscript is successful, you
will be contacted within 3 weeks with a request for the full manuscript
for further consideration. Due to the large amount of submissions, we are unable to respond if
you have failed to follow the submission guidelines or if your
manuscript is unsuccessful.
Title of Jenny Morris's Break in the Weather used as ironic in my flash fiction piece. Just won a highly commended in the Out of the Asylum Writers Spilt Ink Competition - Prose section. Also a break personally going from poetry to prose.
A
Break in the Weather
He
sighed into the dismal drama of his life and battled on. There were days when
he had little strength, moving forward with stiffness. He had a new home with
squared windows and a robust roof. Yet he felt imprisoned after the entirety of
green, the forest and the open sky. Although he walked under the same clouds,
his garden had shrunk to an allotment size.
Sometimes he heard his dead wife’s laughter,
but knew that was an illusion. He saw the same faces in the convoy of early
morning walkers and only had the company of his shadow when circuiting the park.
A few dog owners drifted past, nodding, others crooned about Pippa or Bluey,
and most were less impassioned about the weather. When they were gone there was
nothing more to add. It would have been easier just to ring an empty bell.
At night he watched TV, its flashes of
colour and noise livening up the room. One evening he watched a program that
gave him an idea to visit his local tavern.
The main bar was dark and musty, mostly men
his age seated on stools. On his second Friday night visit, he was hoping to
chat to one regular who had previously spoken to him, but the man leaned on the
crook of his arm, crouched at the bar, his empty glass propping up the sadness
in his face.
Come
this Saturday, the bartender said. We
get a good crowd and usually a country music band. You'll have fun.
The night wasn’t what he expected, and it
brought a change to his face. A younger crowd greeted him. Handshakes and
shoulders touched like a bridge. In that crossing, he encountered the
simplicity of conversation over a round of beers. He noticed, above the hubbub
of music, laughter and voices, all the young men sported beards. They were
impressive, neat and tidy, colourful and not at all housing breakfast crumbs,
toothpaste or foreign bodies.
It's the rage now, said one fellow. Why not grow one and join the club?
He went along every Saturday night. Why
hadn't he thought of growing a beard before? In all his eighty years he had
lathered and shaved, rinsed and patted.
Overnight the hairs inched forward beginning
as little brown wisps. He looked like Benjamin Disraeli. When it had grown and
bushed out he resembled Sir John Forrest. After several months of growing it
long and unkempt, he was Gandalf.
The young men invited him to car trials,
quiz nights, beard contests, and to zero birthdays. Mostly, it was a thirtieth
or fortieth and the talk revolved around shapes, styles and colour. There was the
Johnny Depp, the David Beckham, the Santa Claus, the goatee, the short-boxed
and the stubble. Words like 'soul patch, terminal and mouche' suited his
sensibilities. The men told him about a city barber where he could have his
beard trimmed and coloured, but if he couldn't afford that, there was the beard
trimmer at K-Mart.
Each morning he splashed water on his face,
and gazed at himself in the bathroom mirror. He was not a bearded Anthony
Hopkins or George Clooney, but it was easy to see what had taken place. His old
look had gone in a different direction while his new existence stared back at
him with a neatly trimmed moustache and a bristling, Silverfox beard.
2017 Emerging Writers’ and Illustrators’ Mentorship Program supported by Copyright Agency Cultural Fund
The
Australian Society of Authors (ASA) Emerging Writers’ and Illustrators’
Mentorship Program provides the winners of these award mentorships with
the opportunity to develop their early draft manuscript to a
publishable standard through 13 free mentorships with professional
mentors. Applications are assessed on literary and artistic merit and
developmental potential.
Entries will be accepted in the seven
genres of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, graphic novels, young adult
literature, children’s writing and picture book illustration.
The
2017 program will support 12 mentorships from any eligible genre, funded
by the Copyright Agency’s Cultural Fund, plus one additional mentorship
– the Edel Wignell Mentorship – for children’s writers. This mentorship
is funded by the income from the acclaimed children’s author, Edel
Wignell.
Successful applicants will work closely with a mentor
selected from the ASA Mentors’ list for 25 hours over one year, with an
additional two-hour consultation available following completion of the
mentorship. A further five highly commended applicants will receive a
two-hour phone consultation with a mentor they have selected from the
ASA Mentors’ list.
Writing What You Know
This is an autobiographical event that occurred back in the fifties when my family went camping every school holidays. The exercise that I am currently teaching is that this anecdote of being "nearly" caught in flood waters will be turned into fiction/ art!
Our Victorian Trip
When I was seven, my family was on a camping trip to Melbourne. We had left the calm August shores of Broken Bay with the sun spreading its warmth over the foothills. Heading south along the Hume Highway, we had camped at several places like Bowral and in Goulburn. Dad was a little pressured to get to Melbourne as we only had two weeks in the school holidays. This was the longest trip the family had ever taken.
Along the highway and heading to Wagga Wagga, storm clouds moulded a dark and foreboding sky. My father, an experienced country driver, kept up a great speed in our station-wagon. My older brother and I were pigeoned in the back seat, beside my baby brother harnessed to his. We played eye-spy until all we could see in front of us was "R" for rain. A deluge battered the vehicle. We rocked as lightning flashed its craggy yellow line on the passenger's side window. My mother's side. We needed petrol. We all needed to pee. And so we headed to a roadhouse restaurant. My father kept up the humour about the worst storm he had ever rowed in, and blamed the school holidays for the usual crappy weather. But by the time we arrived his mirth had turned to one of concern. We watched as four cars were pulled by the swirling waters, and continued to watch in amazement as they travelled down the river, then sank. We were ordered to stay inside the car as the Murrumbidgee River's edges had collapsed on the other side. I remember holding in my stomach, as if my own water was about to burst its banks. My older brother Robert wanted a pie and sauce and Dennis (the baby) cried snot over his own hunger. I can still remember the image of all the people behind the plate glass licking their ice-cream cones and looking out at us in our station-wagon, a parking lot that was full of cars, yet ours was the only one that had people in it.
Dad yelled. "Hold on tight." I'll never forget his grit, and that determined look on his face, when he did a quick handbrake turn and we headed across the highway, ploughing through field after field of harvested wheat or barley. I really can't remember which, but Dad planted his foot that day and headed to high ground. He steered us away from a raging river, a greatly reported flood that now lies archived as one of the worst to hit the south west of New South Wales in forty years.
In hindsight, the farm trip was the highlight of the school holidays. We sailed past astounded cows, horses, fir trees and yelping dog until we finally came to an abrupt stop outside a loading shed. The farmer was very kind and gave us some fresh milk. We also go to use the farm's toilet and the family allowed us to bed down for the night in their hay barn. We huddled together that night, safe and dry and you could hear Dad telling us over and over, 'You might take the wrong road out of town, but you always come to a right stop.'
I'm new to voting for the Greens in this Federal Election (2nd July, 2016). I was once a Labor supporter, but since they have changed their policy on Asylum Seekers I decided to stop my support for them. I am against domestic violence, animal cruelty, against cruelty of any kind and to my mind Australia's handling of desperate refugees on Manus Island and in turning back the boats is appallingly inhumane. (Where are they? it's all hush, hush. Where are they living, under the sea? Are they floating on some nether world for the rest of their lives?Have they reached the Kingdom's doors? The government's policy of "safe borders" is a policy of xenophobic hate. Australia is a large continent and could support more immigration, and it should lend a hand to those escaping oppression, rape, murder, war crimes, pillage, loss of home and country, indeed loss of value and worth. There are old sayings my grandmother taught me and I apply it here, as if I was in the same position as them. She said, Helen, 'Always remember to treat your fellow human beings as you would like to be treated' and added concerning those less fortunate than me, 'There but for the grace of God, go I.'
