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The Cairns Institute celebrates the literature of North Queensland at every opportunity, and the 2023 Cairns Tropical Writers Festival on 25-26 February was the ultimate literary rave-up.
Massive crowds flocked to a vibrant, multifaceted program designed to both inspire local readers and writers, and to showcase regional storytelling across a range of genres.
TCI Postgraduate Research Fellow, Elizabeth Smyth, volunteered to support two inspiring workshops – one lead by JCU Adjunct Professor and Life Governor of the Foundation for Australian Literary Studies, Stephen Torre, and another by University of South Australia Professor Craig Batty.
Participants found themselves writing flash fiction, practicing scriptwriting for a TV series, and considering how great literary works have been reimagined. For example, Barbara Kingsolver’s
Demon Copperhead (2022) is an acknowledged contemporary take on Charles Dicken’s mid-nineteenth century novel, David Copperfield.
These much-loved Festival workshops were followed by the launch of the 9th Tropical Writers anthology, On Butterfly Wings. Tropical Writers is an energetic community group committed to supporting local authors and aims to publish an anthology every two years.
As a third-time contributor, Elizabeth was thrilled to be involved.
‘The anthology offers important literary representations of life in the North. Regional literature is often marginalised, despite its centrality to life in the regions. This situation makes Tropical Writers a vital community group, and the anthology acts as an antidote to excessive metropolitan self-interest.
‘Added to this, there remains an insatiable need for many people to understand what it means to be Australian. This understanding depends on having a vision or imaginary of life in the regions. Such conceptualisations are crucial to resolving contemporary issues, both environmental and social. For this reason as well, giving readers access to the many voices across regional Australia is invaluable.’