Join us for a toast to all the attendees and panelists as we close the door on GenreCon 2023: Forbidden Doors and look forward to GenreCon 2024!

Investing in your manuscript is important if you want to elevate your work. But with so many editing options it can be difficult to know the best way forward.  

In this session we are joined by editors - Abigail Nathan, Sumudu Narayana and Cameron Rutherford – who will step you through the editing process and help clarify next steps. 

Some of the most successful creative works were created through partnership and collaboration. Do you want to find a creative collaborator, or are you interested in the benefits of writing in partnership?

Come along and hear from host June Perkins, Chair of the Queensland Writers Centre Management Committee, as she discusses writing in partnership with Geneve Flynn, Mykaela Saunders and Jay Kristoff.

Engaging and building your audience before launch is just as important as finding a publisher.  

Join host Lori-Jay Ellis multimedia storyteller, Leanne Yong author, Bryn Smith TikTok connoisseur, and Tonile Wortley from Hachette Australia as they discuss the best ways to market your book. 

Conquer your fear and come along to GenreCon’s panel on frightful fiction with Lauren Daniels, Josie Montano, Geneve Flynn and Zachary Ashford - celebrated authors of short stories, novels and poetry in genres from paranormal to gothic, folk to speculative, and all kinds of horror in between.

This All Come Back Now is the first-ever anthology of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander speculative fiction – a book written, curated, edited and designed by blackfellas, about blackfellas and for blackfellas. This All Come Back Now expands and subverts the expectations of speculative fiction to centre First Nations communities, cultures and creativity, and features many genres of spec fic, such as ghost stories, bush horror stories, urban fantasy, science fiction and many more imaginative and unsettling genres. Goori editor Dr Mykaela Saunders conceived of this anthology as a love letter to kin and country, to memory and to future-thinking.  

Joining Mykaela an award-winning Noongar writer Archie Weller and Kathryn Gledhill-Tucker, who are two of 21 contributors to This All Come Back Now, to discuss their stories in the anthology and their thoughts on the spec fic genre. 

There are endless ways to tell your story. Do you want to publish a novel, or send people on a wild investigation of clues across social media platforms? Words or images? Will you publish in print, digitally or in some other way? 

Join host and podcast writer Jess Forsayeth, as she discusses the different platforms for storytelling with Leanne Yong, multimedia storyteller and Jini Maxwell, creator and videogame writer. 

If you were given a key to a door and forbidden from opening it, what would you do? What secrets hide behind the door? Is curiosity dangerous or does the door lead to deep self-knowledge? Enter the World of Fairy Tales with the Brisbane Fairy Tale Ring and ring maiden Kathryn Gossow who will be joined by Storytelling Unplugged members to explore the ultimate Forbidden Door tale, Bluebeard.  Jenni Cargill-Strong will tell her version of Bluebeard based on Silvernose and Bettina Nissen will introduce you to sinister Mr Fox. 

Attendees will be invited to enter the enduring world of fairy tales and participate in a discussion about Bluebeard, its variants, and what fairy tales mean to them. Despite the Fairy Tale theme, this session is not suitable for children!

Want to turn your love for true crime into a career? Learn how to approach the pitching and publishing process for non-fiction crime with award-winning journalist and author Megan Norris.

Join GenreCon 2023 patron Nalini Singh in conversation with Judy Gregory.