Kick start the creative process with free writing workshops

Give quake-brain the boot and kick start your writing with a weekend of free workshops from some of the country’s leading authors, poets and publishers.

Sponsored by Copyright Licensing Ltd and The New Zealand Society of Authors (PEN NZ Inc), the weekend will include tips to writing film scripts, how to craft a play, the steps to self-publishing on Kindle and exploring the hero’s journey.

Event organiser, Jenny Haworth of New Zealand Society of Authors, says both Copyright Licensing Ltd and The New Zealand Society of Authors (PEN NZ Inc.) realised the importance of getting Cantabrians writing again.

“The impact of stress on the creative process can stop writers in their tracks,” she says. “I’m hearing from writers across the city that many feel they’ve hit a brick wall and don’t know how to get started writing again.”

Ms Haworth says the 90-minute workshops will be a chance for writers to re-boot their creative brain.

“With writing talents such as Gavin Bishop, Press feature writer Martin Van Beynen and poet Karen Zelas on hand, it will be a weekend that fires up imaginations and will have Cantabrians putting pen to paper in no time.

“Best of all, thanks to the sponsorship from Copyright Licensing Ltd and The New Zealand Society of Authors (PEN NZ Inc.) the workshops are all free,” she says.

The workshops will explore the impact of the earthquakes on creative work and will include writing exercises to stimulate creativity and the expression of inner emotions.

The line up of presenters includes:

Saturday 26 May

10:15am           Kathleen Gallagher(How to Write a Film Script) or

Kathryn Taylor (Fiction Writing)

11:45am           Gary Henderson (How to Craft a Play – how to write using the vocabulary of theatre, and translate from prose into theatre) or Karen Zelas (Writing Poetry)

1:15pm              Gavin Bishop (Making Pictures that Tell a Story)

1:30pm              Jenny Haworth (The Business of Writing – Planning your work for publication)

2:25pm              Jillian Sullivan (The Hero’s Journey – the importance of archetypes in fiction writing)

Sunday 27 May

10:15am           Martin van Beynen (Writing Non-fiction)

11:45am           David Roys (How to Self-Publish a Kindle Novel)

1:30pm              Rachel Scott (The World of Publishing)

Where:             Community Meeting Room and Learning Centre Room 3, Upper Riccarton Library, 71 MainSouth Rd, Sockburn (check times and venue for Saturday workshops)

When:               Saturday, 26 / Sunday, 27 May from 10:15am

What:                Free writing workshops for Christchurchwriters, new or established. Bring writing materials.

For full programme details, see www.authors.org.nz

Presenter Bios

Kathleen Gallagher is a poet, playwright, and filmmaker. She has lectured at both the University of Auckland and the Nelson Polytechnic, and has worked with the Blue Ladder Theatre, the Melbourne Women’s Director Group, Women’s Action Theatre and Wick Candle Film. She has won various awards for theatre, including the NZ Playwrights Award QEII Arts Council NZ. In the Late 1980s and early 1990s, Kathleen Gallagherwas an editor of the academic journal Race Gender Class, and she has published several, well-received collections of poetry.

Kathryn Taylor is a freelance developmental editor, multi e-Published author, has a graduate Diploma in Publishing, and has written professionally for fifteen years. Her recently published novel The Rajah’s Chosen Bride is listed as a best-seller on her publisher’s website. She has received consistently positive reviews for this novel and for her other publications. Until the February earthquake, Kathryn was the creative writing tutor (novel writing and script writing) for Aoraki Polytechnic (Christchurch Campus), where she tutored students studying for a Certificate in Radio, Television and Presenting. The growth of electronic publishing is of great interest to Kathryn. She believes this is the way of the future for authors publishing mainstream and popular fiction. It is her goal is become establish as an e-published author of high-quality romantic fiction both in New Zealandand internationally.

Gary Henderson’s work has been produced around New Zealand, and in South Africa, Australia, Great Britain, the United States and Canada.  His most well travelled play is "Skin Tight" which won a coveted Fringe First Award at the Edinburgh Fringe in 1998 during a sell-out season at the Traverse Theatre. His recent work includes "Home Land," for Fortune Theatre in 2004; and "Peninsula," for the Christchurch Arts Festival in 2005, which also played at Court Theatre and at the Brisbane and Nelson Festivals in 2006.  It has recently had a season at Circa Theatre as part of the 2012 NZ International Arts Festival. "Home Land" was also produced by Circa Theatre in 2007, and won five Chapman Tripp Theatre Awards, including Production of the Year, and Best New NZ Play. Gary has written two radio plays, The Moehau in 2008 - broadcast by RNZ and five other radio stations around the world - and News Bomb in 2011. Garyhas also taught playwriting at Unitec's Department of Performing and Screen Arts in Auckland.

Karen Zelas’ book of poetry, Night’s Glass Table, is the winner of the 2012 IP Picks Best First Book competition and will be launched in August this year in conjunction with the Christchurch Writers’ Festival. A former psychiatrist and psychotherapist, Karen has been Fiction Editor of Takahē for the last five years. Her poetry has been widely published within New Zealand, including in Landfall, Poetry New Zealand, Takahē, and broadcast on radio; also Australian ezines Snorkel and Eclecticism and recently blogged by Interlitq (UK). Several anthologies contain her work. She was editor of Crest to Crest: Impressions of Canterbury, prose and poetry (Wily Publications, 2009) and her historical novel Past Perfect [view at  www.KarenZelas.com] was published by Wily in 2010 and is about to be republished as an ebook by Interactive Publications.

Gavin Bishop has published over 40 books that have been translated into nine languages. He has also written the libretti for children’s ballets for the Royal New Zealand Ballet as well as scripts for television. Gavin is widely travelled and has been a guest author and speaker, through UNESCO, in Japan, China, Indonesiaand the USA. He was a guest lecturer at the Rhode Island School of Design in 1996. In 2003 with an Art and Science Collaboration Grant at Canterbury Universityhe helped produce the world’s first 3-dimensional, animated picture book. His numerous awards include, among others, the Russell Clark Medal for Illustration in 1982, 2006, 2008, 2010, NZ Children's Book of the Year 2000, 2003, 2008 and the Margaret Mahy Medal for Services to Children's Literature 2000.

Jenny Haworth is both writer and publisher. She is the managing director of a small publishing company Wily Publications Ltd that produces around six books a year many of them non-fiction, although fiction is considered.  She has written a number of non-fiction books including The Art of War, the story of New Zealand’s commissioner World War II artists and Swimming Upstream, a history of salmon farming in New Zealand.  She is currently working on a history of road transport and also one on the history of the Canterbury Club.  She is also the author of three novels and has made a start on the fourth that tells the story of the New Zealand troops in Italy in World War II. Jenny will give useful tips on the process of getting published, how to prepare your manuscript to catch the eye of a publisher, the way ahead for publishing both fiction and non-fiction and the various assistance available to New Zealand writers.

Jillian Sullivan is a short-story writer and novelist, now living in Central Otago. Her awards include the Highlights Fiction Award in Americafor children’s fiction, the Tom Fitzgibbon Award and Maurice Gee Prize for Children’s Writing for young adult novels, and recently the Kathleen Grattan Prize for a Sequence of Poems. Her non-fiction books include Fishing from the Boat Ramp, a Guide to Creating, and Myths and Legends, the Gift of Stories from Our Cultures. She teaches Writing for Children for Massey University and will be teaching the Hero’s Journey to writers in America this June for the Highlights Foundation. For more information on Jillian visit, jilliansullivan.co.nz

Martin van Beynen has worked for The Press for over two in different roles graduating from court and justice reporter to deputy chief reporter and senior writer. He has completed a number of major investigative projects, one of which revealed corruption within the school building tenders system in New Zealand. He has exposed many white collar crime schemes and doggedly pursued a number of shonky business people. He also covered the David Bain retrial for Fairfax Media and won wide acclaim for a powerful piece saying why the jury had made a terrible mistake. Martin came to journalism after completing a law degree at Auckland University and several stints in business. He has a weekly column that appears in both The Press and the Waikato Times.

David Roys has written two books about computers - a 552-page technical reference manual which he co-authored in 2009 with a man from Croatia, a man who he still hasn’t met, and, the second, a thriller about a programmer who gets accused of murdering his research assistant. David’s thriller, Coding Isis, was self-published using Amazon’s Kindle Direct in February 2012 and sold over 700 copies in the first three months. David will talk about his experiences of the digital print revolution and show how easy it is to prepare and publish e-books  on Amazon.com and print-on-demand paperbacks with no upfront costs.

Rachel Scott is the Canterbury University Press publisher and has nearly 20 years experience in the book industry, including over 12 as a freelance editor working for Canterbury University Press, Random House and Penguin. Rachel has also worked as a sub-editor at the New Zealand Listener, the National Business Review and the Press, as well as sub-editing tutor for University of Canterbury Graduate Diploma in Journalism students.