The Next Word – about your tutors
Alice Night
Jane Cornes
Gillian O'Shaughnessy
John Harman
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YOUR DAILY TUTORS:
Alice Night: Art + Honesty = Alchemy Alice will be teaching a daily creative writing workshop and co-convening a daily songwriting workshop with Jane. Alice is an established writer, speaker, performer, poet and culturally focused artist. She has extensive experience as a creative arts facilitator, and is best known for creating and facilitating well loved online courses and in-person retreats: Alice uses art as the vehicle for transformation, initiation, authenticity and aliveness. She facilitates with bold vulnerability, intimacy and naturalness. Her songs, poems and theatre pieces reach fiercely into the cultural whilst also welcoming the deeply personal. Alice writes what is noble and what is true, while donning a wild honesty that is unforgettable to witness and likely leaves you laughing or crying. As an artist, Alice's major focus is cultural. She sings, writes, paints, creates theatre and teaches creative courses, all as ways to explore the deep questions of our lives. Alice was educated at The University of Queensland majoring in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island studies music and community development. She then completed a Master of Fine Arts in Writing for Performance at the National Institute of Dramatic Arts. She has received grants from the Australian Council for the Arts to support her in the development of her craft. Jane Cornes Jane will be teaching a daily creative writing workshop, and will co-convene a daily songwriting workshop with Alice. Jane is a multi award-winning wordsmith and qualified trauma-informed counsellor. She teaches creative writing and songwriting at retreats and festivals throughout Australia and overseas. She lives in Perth with husband Neil. Her greatest professional joy is helping others realise their own creative potential. Jane wrote, photographed and designed Lazy Fare, a collection of recipes and non-fiction writing gleaned from her 20 years as a food and travel journalist. In 2021, this self-published book won a special category award at the Gourmand International book awards. In 2020, Jane was named winner of the AAWP/ASSF best short story competition for her short story Cockroach. She subsequently self-published a collection of short stories titled Cockroach and Other Stories. In 2023, her short story Sisu was long-listed for the Fish Publishing short memoir prize. In 2024, her short story Bottlebrush was long-listed for the Sydney Hammond Memorial short story prize. In 2024, her short story Vinegar Lips was Highly Commended by the Marje Wilke short story awards. Jane has written dozens of songs, released six CDs of original music and was half of acclaimed female duo Doris with Margie Hanly. Today, Jane performs in the duo Jane and The Rain with husband Neil, playing at festivals and events throughout Australia. MASTERCLASS PRESENTERS: Gillian O'Shaughnessy Gill will be offering a masterclass in writing flash fiction, as well as talking about her own journey as an award-winning flash fiction author and editor. Gillian is an award-winning author of flash fiction and a former broadcaster and senior journalist with the ABC for 25 years. She has won the London Independent Story Prize, the UK Welkin Mini, the US Fractured Literary Anthology Prize and the UK Reflex Prize for flash fiction, among others. Her work has been widely anthologised and chosen for the 2023, 2024 and 2025 international Best Small Fictions. She is a submissions editor for US flash narrative journal, SmokeLong Quarterly, a judge of the Australian Stella Prize, and a former curator of the Perth Writers Festival. Her debut collection of flash fiction Salt City Runaway was published in May 2026 by Night Parrot Press. John Harman John will be offering a masterclass on the structural elements of story – how to develop the plot, write authentic, character-driven dialogue and tell stories through adroit exposition. John is a professional writer with over forty-five years’ experience of writing for a living. He has always written under his own name, across many different types of medium, including fast-paced thrillers, television scripts and film documentaries. John’s books have been published by Headline Publishing in the UK and distributed in America and Australia. His television scripts have been broadcast by Thames Television and his film scripts distributed worldwide by Guild Sound and Vision. Much of John’s work is ghostwriting for publishers and for private individuals. Naturally, he does not write these under the name John Harman although sometimes, ‘with’ John Harman appears in small type on the front cover along with the name (in much larger type) of the person that the book is about. Usually he is totally anonymous; his name doesn’t appear anywhere in the book. |
