Registrations have opened for our 2024 conference – register here for what is going to be a jam-packed two-day conference on August 3 & 4 in Newport.

And what better way to kick off the announcements of this year’s presenters – and the conference as a whole – than with our Keynote Speaker… Michael Earp!

Michael Earp is a non-binary writer and bookseller living in Naarm (Melbourne, Australia). They are editor of, and contributor to Everything Under the Moon: Fairy tales in a queerer light, Kindred: 12 Queer #LoveOzYA Stories, Out-Side: Queer Words and Art from Regional Victoria and co-edited Avast! Pirate Stories From Transgender Authors with Alison Evans. Their writing has also appeared in Archer, The Age, PopMatters, The Victorian Writer, Aurealis and Underdog: #LoveOzYA Short Stories. For over twenty years they have worked between bookselling and publishing as a children’s and young adult specialist. Their role managing The Little Bookroom, the world’s oldest children’s bookstore saw them named ABA Bookseller of the year. A passionate advocate for LGBTQIA+ literature for young people, they established the #AusQueerYA Tumblr to catalogue all Australian young adult fiction containing queer content and characters. Representation of all people in the literature available to readers of all ages is the ethos that motivates their entire career. They have a Masters in Children’s Literature and a Teaching degree and previously served as committee chair for the #LoveOzYA campaign. Tea is the source of all their power.

In the coming weeks, plenty more presenters and other titbits and teasers will be announced. But don’t wait around, put August 3-4 in your diary and register now! We can’t welcome you to Newport for what will be a full-to-burst, exciting, diverse, and all-around fantastic conference. And don’t forget, if you can’t get to the whole weekend, don’t fret! There are single-day registrations and online attendee registrations.

Register now – and we’ll see you in August!

************

Once & Future Tales: What was, what is… what if?

August 3-4, 2024 | Newport, Victoria                *Register here*

Conference artwork by Roslyn Quinn

“Once upon a time” takes us into a place where time moves differently.

Fairy tales allow us to time travel to the past and scry into the future, uncovering lessons from what once was and paving the way for what might be. We can create conversations with our ancestors, premonitions for our descendants, and dreams of our here and now. Like King Arthur and Finn Macool, what tales lie waiting for our clarion call? And which, like Briar Rose, must be put to sleep for a spell?

Through folk and fairy tales we stitch together motif and memory, epics and anecdotes creating letters from the past to the future. But how do we hold these tales in our hearts here and now?

Do we tell stories because they have happened or because, maybe, they are yet to be?

“Time comes into it. Say it.        Say it. The universe is made of stories not of atoms.”

from The Speed of Darkness by Muriel Rukeyser