ONLY TWO WEEKS! Very excited to be heading back to the seaside town of Newie for this year’s National Young Writers Month (NYWF) (NSFW) (NYFW) (#rejectedNYWFevents).

Here are my picks for the events at which I will be fangirling the hardest and forcing panellists to be my friends:

My Favourite Is Problematic
Pop culture writers share how they coped with finding out their favourite celebs were a bit bigoted. Just so happens to be a panel made up of my favourites. Someone is playing an elaborate prank on me here, wherein I turn up to the event and Patrick Lenton and Elizabeth Flux and Rebecca Shaw and Michelle Law and Clementine Ford all pull off their faces and they were Clive Palmer the whole time! Now I don’t know what to think!
Saturday 4 October, 5pm
Gun Club, Newcastle NSW
http://www.youngwritersfestival.org/festival/favourite-problematic/

Invisible Illnesses
How does illness affect your work when nobody can tell you’re ill just by looking at you? Again, feeling a bit like the NYWF is tailoring their program just for me. (Which perhaps means that there is a panel on solipsism in there somewhere, which will only take place if I attend, thereby teaching me no lesson whatsoever.) Living with ME/CFS and working in an industry that already struggles to pay its writers, this is a topic I’m interested in hearing more about. And it features Express Media Creative Producer and spoonie champion Lefa Singleton Norton, so you know it’s good.
Friday 3 October, 11am
Royal Exchange, Newcastle NSW
http://www.youngwritersfestival.org/festival/invisible-illness/

Funny Ladies
I can’t go to this because I’ll be running a workshop but please PLEASE go for me and livetweet it and make friends with all the funny women and then introduce me to them later so I can be best friends too.
Saturday 4 October, 2pm
Gun Club, Newcastle NSW
http://www.youngwritersfestival.org/festival/funny-ladies/

… There are so many more events to gush about but that is just three that I think will be pretty great. I’ll also be doing some stuff there I guess if you wanted to know anyway here it is: http://www.youngwritersfestival.org/festival/artists/kaitlyn-plyley/

Oh, and if you want some pre-NYWF entertainment …
Read selected highlights of the Best Day Of My Life, or, the day I accidentally started a Twitter hashtag that went viral across Australia. NYWF co-director Alex Neill has put together a great list of some #rejectedNYWFevents tweets. It was a super fun afternoon. The best bit was when we accidentally suggested ridiculous events that were actual events. Haha. Whoops.