What Is Your Favourite Faery Tale? We will be discussing that and a whole lot more at the Australian Fairy Tale Society Conference, which starts this Friday night, June 5, and runs for three days – and for the first time it will be online, so people from anywhere in the world can attend! Although we didn’t know we would be in lockdown when the theme was set, there really couldn’t have been a more appropriate theme than “Magic Mirrors: the Seen and the Unseen” for such a visual interaction via Zoom.
And because it’s online, instead of a one-day, eight-hour conference, it will be held over three days, with morning and afternoon sessions so that people from around the world should be able to attend at least some of the sessions.
It kicks off with an opening party on Friday night at 6:30pm, then there will be two sessions a day – 9.30-11.30am and 2-4pm – on Saturday June 6, Sunday June 7, and Monday June 8. (All times are Sydney Australia, you can find out your time zone here – the US will start on Friday.
All this for just $30 (roughly US$21) – a third of the usual cost, for even more content.
Panellists include enchanting authors Kate Forsyth, Patricia Poppenbeek, Renee Dahlia, K. A. Last (and me, eek!), magical artists Lorena Carrington, Spike Dean, Kathleen Jennings and Monika Viktoria Diak, storyteller Lindy Mitchell-Nilsson, game developer and writer Kathy Smart, and incredible hosts Jo Henwood, Joe Vandermeer and Shirley Way, plus many more!
You can download the program here.
FRIDAY NIGHT 6:30-7.30pm
- Cocktail Party – A chance to get used to Zoom and meet each other.
SATURDAY MORNING 9.30-11.30am
- Kathleen Jennings: Keynote address
- Monika Diak: Show & Tell art
- Lindy Mitchell-Nilssen: Storytelling
SATURDAY AFTERNOON 2-4pm
- Magic Mirrors Discussion Panel
- Kathy Smart: Show & Tell game design
- Panel: Artists
SUNDAY MORNING 9.30-11.30 am
- Sarah Hart: Academic talk – Women in contemporary fairy tales
- AGM – think about nominating yourself or someone else for the Committee!
- Panel: multi modal storytelling
SUNDAY AFTERNOON 2-4pm
- Renee Dahlia & Philippa Borland: Academic talk – Queer retellings
- Livonne Larkins: Show & Tell: role play
- Fiona Price: book launch The Ivory Tower
MONDAY MORNING 9.30-11.30 am
- Dr Kate Forsyth: Academic talk – Kind and Unkind Girls
- Lindy Mitchell-Nilssen: storytelling
- Spike Deane: Show & Tell – glass sculptures
- Serene Conneeley: book launch The Swan Maiden
MONDAY AFTERNOON 2-4pm
- Donna Cameron: Academic talk – landscapes of Australia and Ireland
- Patsy Poppenbeek & Kathryn Gossow: Panel – The Anthology
- Award giving ceremony
- Kate Forsyth: digital storytelling
The imagery of fairy tales is as potent as any spell, whether through the power of the words to conjure carriages made of pumpkins or blue bearded villains, or the art that can present those words to our sight in illustrations, sculptures, jewellery, costumes, photography, paintings, food decoration, masks, puppetry, automata, garden design, doll houses, toys, quilts, and all manner of other arts.
The Australian Fairy Tale Society was established to investigate, create, and communicate fairy tales from an Australian perspective. Our previous conferences have been on The Fairy Tale in Australia, Transformations, Into the Bush, So Many Mattresses, and Gardens of Good and Evil. Local Rings gather five times a year to explore specific fairy tales. We have an irregular Ezine and are working hard at creating an original Anthology, South of the Sun: Australian Fairy Tales for the 21st Century.
In our sixth annual conference we will look (pun intended!) more closely at these visual and artistic representations in Magic Mirrors: the Seen and the Unseen.
Conference artwork by Erin-Claire Barrow.
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