During the festival, The Smith Family will host a discussion panel Why I Read , where prominent Australian authors, Steven Carroll, Raimond Gaita and Alice Pung, will discuss with novelist and academic Antoni Jach, why they read as children and the doors that books and reading unlocked in their lives.

About 300 children from disadvantaged communities will be able to participate in the festival thanks to The Smith Family. By giving these kids the opportunity to experience Australia’s best authors first hand; they’re hoping to inspire them with the belief that getting the best out of their education can help them to make the most of their lives.

In partnering with the Melbourne Writers Festival, The Smith Family is highlighting how important it is for every Australian to have the opportunity to develop fundamental literacy skills, such as reading and writing. Research shows that supporting a child’s education is one of the most effective means of breaking the cycle of disadvantage.

The Smith Family will host ‘Why I Read’, at the Melbourne Writers Festival 2009 on Saturday, 22nd August, 1:00pm, at ACMI, Federation Square, Melbourne.

In 1978 the New South Wales Government inaugurated the annual New South Wales Premiers Literary Awards to honour distinguished achievement by Australian writers. The Awards are announced during the Sydney Writers’ Festival. The NSW Premier’s Literary Awards are the richest literary awards in Australia.

The NSW Premiers Book of the Year for 2009 is ‘The Boat’ by Nam Le .

Nam Le was born in Vietnam and raised in Australia. He has previously received the Pushcart Prize, the Michener-Copernicus Society of America Award, and fellowships from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, and Phillips Exeter Academy. His fiction has appeared in venues including Zoetrope: All-Story, A Public Space, Conjunctions, One Story, NPR’s, Selected Shorts and the Best American Nonrequired Reading, Best New American Voices, Best Australian Stories, and Pushcart Prize anthologies. He is the fiction editor of the Harvard Review.

The Boat is a stunningly inventive, deeply moving fiction debut: stories that take the readers from the slums of Colombia to the streets of Tehran; from New York City to Iowa City; from a tiny fishing village in Australia to a foundering vessel in the South China Sea, in a masterful display of literary virtuosity and feeling. In the opening story, “Love and Honor and Pity and Pride and Compassion and Sacrifice,” a young writer is urged by his friends to mine his father’s experiences in Vietnam — and what seems at first a satire on turning one’s life into literary commerce becomes a transcendent exploration of homeland, and the ties between father and son.

Full list of all the winners can be found here .

Here at Two Flat Whites, we’re all about giving creative types the chance to share their talent with the world.  Two Flat Whites focuses on discovering, promoting & nurturing Australian talent. Whether you are a budding young writer, fashion designer, artist, photographer, musician, restaurateur, chef or film maker this is the network for you!

Two Flat Whites is a non for profit organisation and is proud to support not only talented Australians trying to showcase their work, we also use our powers for good & support many charities & local community events.

Two Flat Whites encourages submissions of articles on a variety of topics from young writers. The topics currently written encompass film, fashion, design, art, food, lifestyle, music & even politics. If you are an established or buddy young writer who can spare some time to write a regular article, or even write on an ad-hoc basis, please put your hand up, we can always use your help.

The website is gathering a steady following, boasting over 150,000 readers a month. This means wonderful exposure for your work! So what are you waiting for? Would you like to report on a music gig, comment on something in the news, share a place you visited, talk about a dining experience or tell us what is happening in Canberra?

If you would like to peruse the articles written by our network of Australian writers then just check out the “mindless banter” section on Two Flat Whites. Displaying your writings on Two Flat Whites is very simple; please email your interest to ben

Here at Two Flat Whites, we’re all about giving creative types the chance to share their talent with the world.  Two Flat Whites focuses on discovering, promoting & nurturing Australian talent. Whether you are a budding young writer, fashion designer, artist, photographer, musician, restaurateur, chef or film maker this is the network for you!

Two Flat Whites encourages submissions of articles on a variety of topics from young writers. The topics currently written on encompass film, fashion, design, art, food, lifestyle, music & even politics. If you want to check out the articles written by our network of Australian writers then just check out the “ mindless banter ” section on Two Flat Whites.

You will find some of the articles below. Writing an article is very simple, please email your interest to ben

The youth of our nation & our online deeds!

The cheques in the mail!

Old Fashioned (Market) Values

When Emailing Lists Go Off – The Law isn’t the ass; it’s you!

Who is Guillermo Habacuc Vargas?

Deni Hines at Lizotte’s Restaurant

Australia Says No to Violence against Women!

Have we lost the Human Touch?

Diesel at The Vanguard!

Cities & Towns – ‘Newtown’

The Talisman Project

Cities & Towns – ‘Tilpa’

Bernard Cohen’s The Writing Workshop runs after-school, school holiday, online and in-school creative writing workshops and activities for children and young people. There writing workshops and programs help young writers build confidence, take pride in work, develop creativity, improve literacy, increase general braininess and have a lot of fun.

Bernard Cohen has taught creative writing at all educational levels from infants’ school to university, and to all ages from five to (approximately) 75. He has been writer-in-residence at Peckham Library and Sir John Soane’s Museum in London, University College Worcester, Taipei City International Writers’ Program and trAce Online Writing Community in Nottingham. Later in 2006 he will be in writer-in-residence at the Writers’ Centre in Wagga Wagga.

Young people from Bernard’s workshops have published their writing on websites in Australia and the UK, written books, stories and poems, exhibited written work at the Australian Museum (Face-to-Face “Teenage Survivors of Torture and Trauma), and won the Aeroplane Jelly “Bertie the Aeroplane” Writing competition (kindergarten section).

Bernard is also the award-winning author of a children’s picture book, four-and-a-quarter novels (the quarter was actually a whole book, but written with three other writers) and a CD ROM. His awards include the 1996 Australian/Vogel Literary Award for The Blindman’s Hat and a 2001 Arts Council of England Writer’s Award. He was listed for three consecutive years (1997-99) among the Sydney Morning Herald’s Best Young Australian Novelists, and was inaugural Alumnus of the Year at the University of Technology, Sydney in 1997.

This is a wonderful initiative & Two Flat Whites is proud to be supporting such a fantastic community resource for kids & people who want to try something a little different. Don’t be shy, be creative!

The Prime Minister the Honourable Kevin Rudd has announced the Fiction and Non-fiction winners of the new Prime Minister’s Literary Awards for 2008. A prize of $100,000 is awarded to the works judged to be of the highest literary merit in each of the two below categories.

Non-fiction winner:

Ochre and Rust: Artefacts and Encounters on Australian Frontiers – Philip Jones

Ochre and Rust takes Aboriginal artefacts from their museum shelves and traces their stories, revealing charged and nuanced moments of encounter in Australia’s frontier history. Philip Jones positions them at the centre of these gripping, poignant tales, transporting the reader into the heart of Australia’s frontier zone.

Ochre and Rust builds incrementally, resulting in a convincing new insight into our frontier past and the motives of its characters. (Wakefield Press).

Fiction winner:

The Zookeeper’s War – Steven Conte

A story of passion and sacrifice in a city battered by war. It is 1943 and each night in a bomb shelter beneath the Berlin Zoo an Australian woman, Vera, shelters with her German husband, Axel, the zoo’s director. As tensions mount in the closing days of the war, nothing, and no one, it seems, can be trusted.

The Zookeeper’s War is a powerful novel of a marriage, and of a city collapsing. It confronts not only the brutality of war but the possibility of heroism. (Fourth Estate).

Each & every week, Two Flat Whites will gaze into it’s crystal ball & provide you, our readers, with ‘What’s On’ in your area. Whether you’re from the city,the burbs, interstate or rural Australia we have something for you!

We will post links to events from all of the Two Flat Whites categories. So if you would like to promote an upcoming event, let us know, email us & we’ll help you get the word around town. ben

The Arts

MindBodySpirit Festival

Mark Alsweiler @ palmer projects

Food

Street Smart – Helping the homeless

Music

Newtown Festival 2008

The 19th Annual Glebe Music Festival

Fashion

2threads Fashion Awards

Film

The Homeless World Cup documentary film, Kicking It

Newcastle the movie – starts in cinemas this weekend!

Interstate

Djerriwarrh Festival

Rural Australia

Gundaroo Bush Festival

Coffs Coast Food & Wine Festival

Days Of Wine, Arts & Roses Festival

The search is on for NSW’s best talent!

Speak, scream, howl, whisper or sing your original poem at the Australian Poetry Slam — NSW heats — in an electric live event where the audience is the judge! All contestants are given a mic, a live audience and just two minutes to impress the judges (selected at random at each heat) with their spoken word, poetry, hip hop, monologues and stories.

Heat winners will compete in the State Final at the State Library of NSW on the 21st November 2008. NSW’s top two slam poets will battle against state and territory winners for the coveted Australian Poetry Slam 08 title and $5,000 cash.

There are 4 heats to go in NSW before the NSW State Final on the 21st November 2008. For more information on the heats and the rules, please go to www.sl.nsw.gov.au/poetryslam . The National Grand Final will be held at the Sydney Opera House on the 4th December 2008.

Lip magazine puts life in perspective.

lip magazine is an independent, advertisement-free publication for young women aged 14-26.  lip provides intelligent, thoughtful and empowering articles and fiction on topics that are relevant for women today. lip is not about celebrities and how to be the next “It girl”- lip is written for and by real girls who care about more than just fashion, makeup and sex. The magazine encourages girls to send in written and artistic submissions, aiming to not only give young people a chance to be published, but to produce a magazine that shares the personal experiences and opinions of its readers.

Do you really need another magazine telling you how to feel good about yourself and on the next page featuring yet another glamorous but seriously underfed model in order to sell you the latest celebrity fad diet book and handbags one can only ever dream of affording?

Life is complicated enough without being spoonfed unrealistic and unattainable ideals of the “right body”, the “right bling” and the “right way to give a blowjob”. Lip is for girls who think, feel, create, speak out and live. Girls who aren’t afraid to be themselves.

What do you have to lose? Check it out……

The Big Issue is an independent current affairs & entertainment magazine sold in towns & cities throughout Australia by people experiencing homelessness and/or long term unemployment.

It provides an opportunity for vendors to positively change their lives by earning an income & interacting with the main stream community. Vendors keep half the cover price of every magazine they sell. All vendors receive training, sign a code of conduct & wear identification.

Two Flat Whites has been a supporter of The Big Issue for some time now & of all the magazines & newspapers in circulation, this is one of the best. The Big Issue covers politics, current affairs, community, the arts, film, music, books & so much more.

Another thing The Big Issue encourages & we love at Two Flat Whites, is its support of the community. It supports Australian small businesses, local writers & personalities & the opportunity for the people that sell the mag to contribute in writing & being interviewed for articles.

So get out there & support this great cause & help the less fortunate in the community. These people that sell The Big Issue have made a positive step to living a fulfilled life & can use your help. Say G’day & give the vendor a smile when purchasing your next or first Big Issue!

Article written by Liam Gibbs