The 2020 ASAL Annual Conference was to be hosted by James Cook University at the Cairns Institute from 29 June – 2 July. Due to restrictions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the Cairns program has been cancelled, and presentations will now be delivered virtually between 29 June and 10 July. Please register your interest to receive details about the program when they become available. Registration for the virtual conference is free to financial ASAL members. To pay your membership, please visit https://www.asal.org.au/membership/. To check your membership status, please email ASAL Secretary, Dr Demelza Hall: d.hall@federation.edu.au.

For more than forty years, ASAL annual conferences have offered a venue where creative writers and academic critics have come together in a convivial atmosphere, but the rise of university-based creative writing programs in Australia has sometimes called into question the relationship between creative writing and literary studies. This conference aims to address such questions and to extend the dialogue between these two disciplines in Australian literary studies.