2008 TASMANIAN WRITER IN RESIDENCE TIM THORNE AT UPEI, CHARLOTTETOWN.
Distinguished Australian poet and poetry publisher Tim Thorne was the 2008 UPEI Writer-in-Residence from Tasmania during October. His visit was part of the annual exchange of writers-in-residence between Tasmania and Prince Edward Island. His residency is co-hosted by the UPEI Dean of Arts, Department of English, and Institute of Island Studies, and the P.E.I. Writers' Guild.
Tim has lived in Tasmania most of his life. His jobs have included glass packer, storeman, community arts officer, and current affairs columnist for the Hobart Mercury. In 1985 he established the Tasmania Poetry Festival, which he directed until 2001. The author of twelve books, he is publisher of Cornford Press, which features Tasmanian poets. Island author Deirdre Kessler, writer-in-residence in Tasmania in 2007, says that Tim is wonderfully warm and witty, as well as a gifted poet. He has always been passionately interested in political issues. His poetry increasingly reflects his environmental and political concerns, and the links between these issues and language. His devotion to his community is evident also in his work as writer-in-residence for various organizations and poet in public schools, universities, and prisons.
While on PEI, Tim held various activities, including individual, one-hour consultations with twenty Island writers; a full day workshop and public readings and a reception.
To know more about Tim's time on PEI, please read his report.
2007 WRITER IN RESIDENCE DEIRDRE KESSLER (UPEI), IN HOBART, TASMANIA.
Island writer and UPEI English Department sessional lecturer Deirdre Kessler was selected by the Tasmanian Writers' Centre for the 2007 Tasmanian-Prince Edward Island island-to-island writers' exchange. During the month-long residency Kessler stayed at a writers' retreat in Hobart, Tasmania, Australia.
In Hobart, Tasmania, Virginia Woolf’s “room of one’s own” translates to an 1830s whalers’ cottage of one’s own, overlooking the rooftops of historic Salamanca Place, with a view of Mt. Wellington from the writing desk. The Kelly Street Writers’ Cottage could not be a more beautiful and inspiring place for a writer to live and work....
Click here for a PDF version of the report.
submitted by
Deirdre Kessler
November 30, 2007
Deirdre Kessler teaches creative writing, children's literature, and composition with the UPEI English Department, and is author of many books for young people and fiction and poetry for adults. She is past recipient of the Prince Edward Island Award for Distinguished Contribution to the Literary Arts; in 2005 a chapbook of her poetry, "Subtracting by Seventeen," first-prize winner of the Milton Acorn Poetry Award, was published by Saturday Morning Chapbooks. This Christmas two of her stories were published in a new collection by Nimbus.
2006 TASMANIAN WRITER IN RESIDENCE DANIELLE WOOD AT UPEI, CHARLOTTETOWN.
Hosting Danielle Wood, in collaboration with the PEI Writers Guild and the English Dept was lots of fun. She even did a reading in Breadalbane, so we used that as an excuse to have a party!
Danielle teaches in the English program at the University of Tasmania, primarily in the field of creative writing. Danielle is a writer whose first novel, The Alphabet of Light and Dark, won The Australian/Vogel Award Literary Award in 2002 and the Dobbie Award for women writers in 2004, as well as being shortlisted for a range of other prizes. Two of the stories from her most recent book, Rosie Little's Cautionary Tales for Girls, were published in the Best Australian Stories anthologies of 2003 and 2005. A collection of contemporary fairy tales for grown-up girls, Rosie Little is soon to be translated into Italian, and Danielle is working on a screen adaptation. In 2004 Danielle was awarded an Australia Council grant for work on her third major creative work, a novel titled Of a Feather.
Institute of Island Studies