Joanna Ingham, NAWE's Programme Manager, writes:

We hope that our theme of 'voice' will prove to be a stimulating and pertinent topic for writers working in education in its broadest sense. NAWE aims, through its conferences, to bring together writers and other education professionals to share practice and learn from each other in a focused and supportive environment. We would be delighted if you would be interested in proposing a contribution to the conference and we hope that our exploratory thoughts below might start to inspire you!

What does voice mean to the writer? How did you find your individual voice as a writer and how do you help others to do the same? Does the writer in education have a special responsibility to help others find their voice? Especially those who have been silenced or feel that they are not heard?

'For the prose artist the world is full of other people's words, among which he must orient himself and whose speech characteristics he must be able to perceive with a very keen ear' (Mikhail Bakhtin). What are the delights and challenges of writing in voices deliberately not your own? Which are the theories of narration and the narrator you find most useful in your work? What are the effects of writing in dialect or slang, sounding regional or diaspora voices?

Is there a relationship between the degree of formality/informality/register in a piece of drama, a poem, a short story and the conditions under which voices speak?

How important is your voice when you present your work to an audience as a reading or performance? What is the relationship between the poetry reading and performance poetry? Does writing for radio have a special relationship with the voice?

To what extent is the writing of drama about creating and testing character through voice? Can text successfully emerge through the theatre techniques of devising and improvisation? At what stage does it need to be set onto paper?

If you would like to contribute to the conference by addressing any of these or related questions, we would love to hear from you. Please send proposals for practical writing workshops, seminar papers and opening contributions for panel-led discussions to:

Joanna Ingham, Programme Manager, NAWE
preferably by email as below
or by post, c/o Flat 8, 39 Central Hill, London SE19 1BW

The deadline for submissions is Friday 20 August 2004.

If you are invited to deliver your proposed contribution, you will be registered as a conference delegate free of charge. For more information or to discuss your proposal, please call or email Joanna as below. Your ideas and suggestions will be most welcome and we look forward to hearing from you!