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• The Story Playground with Lyndon Riggall (for 12-18 year olds)

  • When
    30 Mar 2025
  •  
    10:00 AM - 1:00 PM
  • Location
    The Hobart Library
  • Spaces left
    10

  Register

  The Story Playground

  It's easy to get very serious about writing, but sometimes in the hard work of creating characters and building storyworlds we lose our sense of play.
  

  In this workshop, Lyndon Riggall will guide you through a series of exercises designed to create unique and original writing from ideas you bring with you, or brand new ones, all with fun at the centre. Exploring different ways that stories can be designed, populated, and told, you'll discover the joy of writing with a sense of playfulness, as together we set our narratives and characters loose on the story playground!

  This workshop is for young people aged 12-18 years

  Lyndon Riggall is the author of the picture books Becoming Ellie (illustrated by Graeme Whittle) and Tamar the Thief (illustrated by Grace Roberts). He is an English teacher, was winner of the 2013 Hot Key Books Young Writers Prize, and is co-president, alongside Georgie Todman, of the Tamar Valley Writers Festival.

  
  

  This workshop is free of charge, thanks to the support of the Tasmanian Department of Premier and Cabinet.

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• Dungeons and Dragons?

  • When
    12 Apr 2025
  •  
    10:00 AM - 1:00 PM
  • Location
    The Hobart Library
  • Spaces left
    20

  Register

  The table top gaming phenomenon has amassed a huge following in the last ten years. From humble beginnings in the US, it has spread across the world and spawned TV shows, movies, books and YouTube series. But there can be no D&D table without the Dungeon Master or DM.
  
  The DM is the keeper of the lore, the guide for the journey and the arbiter of the rules. For every 20 people who want to play D&D, you're lucky to find a single DM. 
  
  CJ has been a DM for eight years across multiple tables and using multiple systems. In this workshop she will demystify the process so that you can come to a table feeling confident in your ability to guide your friends on their adventure.
  
  Some of the topics covered will include;
  

  • What do I really need to be a DM?
  • Where to get all the information you could want
  • Module Vs Homebrew
  • How important is note taking?
  • What do I do if something unexpected happens?
  • How to set up a game where everyone is safe, comfortable and ready to adventure!
  • And most importantly - understanding that no two DMs are exactly the same, and that's a VERY good thing.

  If you have specific questions you would like to put to CJ ahead of time, please feel free to email them through. CJ will take questions on the day and make sure everyone is heard, but if you are concerned about speaking in a group, she is very happy to collect some questions before the day.

  This workshop is free of charge, thanks to the support of the Tasmanian Department of Premier and Cabinet.

  
  

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• Seeing Nature with Sarah Day (for 17-18 year olds)

  • When
    26 Apr 2025
  •  
    10:00 AM - 1:00 PM
  • Location
    The Hobart Library
  • Spaces left
    20

  Register

  Seeing Nature with Sarah Day

  A poetry workshop for 17 and 18-year-olds

  who would like to understand more about poetry and nature. 
  

  You may never have written a poem, or you may want to improve your poems and make them more accessible to a wider readership; or, you may be an avid reader of poetry and want to learn more about the powerful effect poems can have on you. Everyone is welcome to this session. 
  People have been writing about nature for a long time in different cultures. Through time, they have expressed widely different understandings of what nature is. Some people observe nature, some people are at home in nature; for some, nature might be seen as the enemy. Perhaps your view of nature reflects the times we live in? You will have the opportunity to talk about and write poems that observe and celebrate nature, or poems that express concern for nature, or poems that use nature as metaphor to say something else entirely.

  Through a series of short exercises, I will encourage you to let your poems lead you to your subject matter. 
  

  If you would like to bring a drafted poem relating to nature, I will try to make time to talk about it on the day.

  (You might produce something in this workshop that you would like to submit to the  national Dorothea McKellar Poetry Competition whose topic this year is: ‘All the beautiful things’!)

  Sarah Day was born in England and grew up in Tasmania. Awards for her books include the Judith Wright Calanthe Queensland Premier’s, the Judith Wright ACT, the University of Melbourne Wesley Michelle Wright Prize and the Anne Elder Award. In 2002 her New and Selected Poems was published by Arc in UK. It was shortlisted for the NSW Premier’s Awards and received a UK Poetry Book Society Recommendation.

  Sarah has been resident at the BR Whiting Library in Rome, has read at writers’ festivals around Australia and been a guest at the Festival de Poesie in Paris in 2001 and 2006, at King’s Lynn in England 2002 and 2017, and University of Lisbon 2011. Sarah’s poems have been set to music by British composer Anthony Gilbert. Sarah was poetry editor of Island Magazine for seven years, teaches English and Creative Writing and has been a member of the Literature Board of the Australia Council. In 2017, her story In the Dark won the Alan Marshall Short Story Competition.

  This workshop is free of charge, thanks to the support of the Tasmanian Department of Premier and Cabinet.

  
  

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• Johanna Bell: How to write great picture books

  • When
    17 May 2025
  •  
    10:00 AM - 1:00 PM
  • Location
    The Hobart Library
  • Spaces left
    20

  Register

  How to write great picture books

  with Johanna Bell
  

  About the workshop

  Join award-winning picture book author, Johanna Bell, in this hands-on workshop. Using a mix of text analysis, generative writing, and real-life examples, participants will learn how to craft and paginate a picture book manuscript. Whether you have a seed of an idea, a draft manuscript or a picture book that’s ready to be pitched, this workshop will help you take your work to the next level. Open to authors, illustrators and author-illustrators aged 16+ years.

  Johanna Bell is an award-winning children’s author, poet and Churchill Fellow based in Nipaluna / Hobart. Her poems have appeared in Overland, Griffith Review and Australian Poetry, and her children’s fiction is out with Allen & Unwin, UQP, Scholastic and Thames & Hudson.

  In 2017, Johanna won CBCA Picture Book of the Year and in 2020, she was shortlisted for a Prime Minister’s Literary Award. Her latest books are Digger Digs Down illustrated by Hobart-based Huni Bolliger and Searching for Treasure illustrated by Emma Long. Johanna likes playing with form and writing books that don’t follow the rules.

  
  

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• Journeys and Stories with Coral Tulloch (for 12-15 year olds)

  • When
    24 May 2025
  •  
    10:00 AM - 1:00 PM
  • Location
    The Hobart Library
  • Spaces left
    20

  Register

  Journeys and Stories

  with Coral Tulloch

  This workshop is for young people aged 12-15 years
  

  Join Coral for a workshop to discover your own journeys and stories.  All you will need is a pencil and paper (all provided), your imagination and your voice.
  

  Using the knowledge you have of the world around, you will be encouraged to express something personal about yourself, your friends, family or community, encouraged to bend the truth, mix the times, and change the characters to create a story in both written and visual narratives, mixing fiction with non-fiction…letting paths appear and following journeys, wherever they will lead.

  For those who feel they would rather draw or rather write, or are unsure of what they could do, there will be lucky dips to start you on your journey. 

  Coral Tulloch has illustrated over 50 fiction and non-fiction books for children, in Australia and internationally.

  She is the creator of a syndicated page for children, 'The Tales of Wombat Creek', which appeared for over 20 years in newspapers throughout Australia and overseas. Her book Antarctica, The Heart of the World, which she wrote and illustrated, won the Environment Award for Children's Literature in 2004.

  As well as having a passion for environmental education, Coral loves Antarctica, which she visits when she can as artist-in-residence on tourist voyages; but recently drawings of penguins have given way to tortoise shells. Coral lives in Hobart with her husband, Peter and daughter, Tully.

  This workshop is free of charge, thanks to the support of the Tasmanian Department of Premier and Cabinet.

  
  

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• Rosie Dub: Point of View

  • When
    5 Jul 2025
  •  
    10:00 AM - 1:00 PM
  • Location
    The Hobart Library
  • Spaces left
    20

  Register

  Point of View, Perspective and Voice Workshop with Dr Rosie Dub
  

  First person, second, third, close-up, distant, witness . . . whether we’re writing fiction or narrative non-fiction, every story requires us to make choices regarding point of view, perspective and voice. Together, these three elements make up the lens through which a story is told.

  • Whose eyes do we want to tell our story through?
  • How much do our characters know?
  • Are they telling the truth?
  • What unique perspective does each character bring to a story?

  Through discussion, readings and writing exercises we’ll explore a range of points of view and perspectives, create an unreliable narrator and experiment with developing a compelling and characterful narrative voice.

  Dr Rosie Dub is a novelist (Gathering Storm and Flight), mentor, teacher, editor and facilitator of the Centre for Story (www.centreforstory.com), a platform for reimagining the world through story. Rosie spent four years as Creative Writing Fellow at Aberystwyth University in Wales, supervising PhD and MA students. She currently teaches on the MA in Writing program at Swinburne University in Melbourne and runs a wide range of workshops and courses, including the Alchemy of Story series.

  Rosie’s twice monthly Alchemy of Story newsletter provides insights, practical advice and exercises exploring how story forms us, how story frees us and how we can create our own transformational stories that help to reimagine our world.

  Laughter, empathy and a safe space to learn, create and share. Fabulous teaching and a wonderful supportive group. Rosie is the real deal. I had so many ‘aha’ moments and walked away with new insights and solutions to fix my tricky work in progress. A thousand thank you’s Rosie. Erica Adamson

  
  

  
  

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