On September 22, award-winning writers Emma Myers and Georgina Woods will return to the university they each graduated from to talk about their own creative writing, Yak Staff Writer Tianna Rotunno reports.

In the first of a series of public talks on “Writing for Social Change,” they will also be “In Conversation” with Associate Professor Trisha Pender at the University of Newcastle (UoN).

Emma Myers is an AACTA Award-winning screenwriter, journalist, and disability advocate. She co-created the critically acclaimed SBS series Latecomers as part of her Honours degree in English in 2022. Just a few years later, Emma is returning to her Alma Mater to talk to students studying her television show in the course “Australian Stories.” It will be a full-circle moment.

Georgina Woods won this year’s Gwen Harwood Poetry Prize and her first poetry collection, The Tide Will Take It, was published by Puncher & Wattmann in 2022. She has a PhD in English, also from UON, and is a prominent environmental advocate. Georgina will be talking about her writing and the impetus behind it in a new uni course on Writing for Social Change.

Emma and Georgina have created waves through their writing, standing up and demanding social change on some of Australia’s biggest stages. They show us that our written words can have a strong impact, and that social change can be advocated for in a variety of creative ways. Bringing these two exciting local heroes together for the first time, this is a conversation you won’t want to miss.

Myers states: “I’ve always had a drive to change the perceptions of people living with a disability,” while Woods claims that the climate crisis is a “psychological and cultural phenomenon that requires art as well as activism.”

The event will be held on Monday 22 September,  at the NuSpace Building, Room X101 between 6 pm and 7.30 pm.

To secure your ticket, register HERE