Event and Ticketing Details
Dates & Times
Monday 28 September
6:15 PM - 7:15 PM
Independent publishing house Sleepers released the first Sleepers Almanac in 2005. Since then, the release of the almanac, always a collection of quality short stories, has developed into an annual literary event. It’s also served as an annual riposte to doomsayers proclaiming the death of the short story.
In honour of the tenth and final Sleepers Almanac, we are hosting a special edition of The Next Big Thing featuring contributors past and present. Celebrating writers who navigate the art of the short story, as well as the readers who love them, this event will honour the contribution the Sleepers Almanac has made to the Australian writing community.
Hosted by Louise Swinn.
Featuring
Louise Swinn
Louise Swinn is a journalist, editor, critic and writer, co-founder of Sleepers independent publishers, the Small Press Network, and the Stella Prize. Louise edited Choice Words (Allen & Unwin, 2019), a collection of pieces demystifying abortion, and currently works as a journalist with the Australian Education Union.
View Profile
Sam Cooney
Sam Cooney runs the literary organisation TLB, which houses the independent book publishing press Brow Books and quarterly literary magazine The Lifted Brow, as well as running a website, writing prizes, events, and more. He is publisher-in-residence at RMIT, teaches sessionally at several universities, and is a freelance writer and literary critic.
In 2017 he took part in the Australia Council’s ‘Future Leaders’ professional development program, and in 2018 he was a member of the Australia Council publishing delegation tour of India, and travelled to the United States and the UK on Australia Council funded research trips about not-for-profit trade publishing, and was invited into the inaugural Foundry658 Accelerator program run by the State Library of Victoria and the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) as part of the Victorian Government’s Creative State strategy.
Kalinda Ashton
Kalinda Ashton’s first novel, The Danger Game, was published in August 2009 (Sleepers).
Her short stories have been widely published, in literary journals and anthologies including Meanjin, The Sleepers Almanac, Overland, Strange and Hecate, and they have been broadcast on ABC Radio.
Kalinda has aPhD in creative writing from RMIT University and teaches literature and creative writing at RMIT and Victoria universities. She is an associate editor of Overland and her short plays have also been produced.
David Astle
Alias DA on Friday's puzzle page in the Age, David Astle is a lifelong wordsmith, writer, columnist and ABC broadcaster. His latest book - Rewording The Brain - explores the neural benefits of crosswords. You can catch him on Evenings most weeknights, or flapping a dictionary on SBS's Celebrity Letters & Numbers.
View Profile
Jane Ormond
Jane Ormond is a freelance writer and editor from Melbourne. Her fiction has been published by Cardigan Press, Sleepers and Going Down Swinging and performed on Radio National, and she has appeared at the Emerging Writers’ Festival and the St Kilda Writers Festival. She’s a graduate of RMIT’s Professional Writing and Editing program and was selected to take part in the inaugural three-part HARDCOPY fiction program at the ACT Writers’ Centre.
For money, she writes about food, travel and technology for publications and organisations such as Lonely Planet, Fairfax Media and Wolf Interactive. For no money, she half-finishes novels.