From 30 November to 2 December 2014 Massey University hosted the 19th Annual Australasian Association of Writing Programmes (AAWP) Conference at the Massey Wellington campus (http://www.aawp.org.au/19th_annual_conference). The conference featured three New Zealand keynote speakers: playwright and screen-writer Hone Kouka, novelist Emily Perkins, and creative non-fiction writer Martin Edmond. Other major events at the conference included the Wellington launch of Poetry New Zealand, now edited by Jack Ross at Massey University, as well as the launch of the Aotearoa Creative Writing Research Network (ACWRN). Martin Edmond’s keynote talk also dovetailed with the opening of the Placing the Personal Essay Colloquium (http://placingthepersonalessay.weebly.com), co-organised by Ingrid Horrocks of Massey University and Cherie Lacey of Victoria University.
This is only the second time that the Australasian Association of Writing Programmes conference has been hosted in New Zealand, and conference co-organiser Thom Conroy said, “This event marks an important development for collaborations and conversations between creative writers in New Zealand and Australia”. Other conference organisers included Gail Pittiway from Wintec as well as Ingrid Horrocks and Hannah Gerard of Massey, Wellington. Nick Allen, a Massey PhD student in literature at the Palmerston North campus, served as executive conference coordinator