Peter’s Place aims to create an ideal environment for the individual journey of each writer at no cost to the writer beyond the annual Writer Conversation subscription fee.
The ‘Peter’ of Peter’s Place is Writer Conversation founder Peter Bishop. Peter was Foundation Creative Director of Varuna –The Writers’ House from 1994 to 2010. His passion and talent for working with writers has been acknowledged in literally hundreds of books and is the driving force behind The Writer Conversation.
The heart of Peter’s Place –and the starting point for the Writer Conversation adventure– is Your Place, our program to support the development of work in progress in any prose genre. Your Place provides perceptive, sympathetic and highly experienced companionship for your project from early recognition to publisher readiness.
If You've Been Kind to Nature.. Emma Magenta - Day Gallery, Blackheath
Remnant of a Dream - Carmel Gold - Day Gallery, Blackheath
Peter Bishop writes:
I’ve been working with writers for over thirty years. Each writer is a new and fascinating challenge. I like to say to writers: What I always aim to do is to ground you in that thing in your life that’s uniquely yours - because that is the place where becoming a writer becomes an absorbing adventure.
You may submit an application for Your Place at any time. For the foundation year of The Writer Conversation, at the end of each month I’ll select up to three writers to work with long-term, aiming to select 30 over the year. I’m looking for projects that are growing strongly in that place that’s unique to the writer. I ask writers to email me something about themselves and their project and to attach no more than 20 pages of writing.
With each selected writer we start with an extended consultation with two more consultations to follow over the year at times of the writer’s choosing. We can continue two consultations each year for as long as it is useful.
I expect to work mainly with debut or second books – but I’m often just the person for an established writer setting off in a new direction. A writer never stops becoming a writer…
Submissions to Your Place:
Please send submissions to [Writer Conversation email address] with subject line Your Place.
You will be notified of the receipt of your submission. For this first year of The Writer Conversation I’ll respond to each submission personally.
COMING SOON TO PETER’S PLACE
Over our foundation year, we will introduce several more programs to create a thriving community of support for writer development and presentation. For example, The Rescue Party will explore possibilities for those many completed manuscripts that have been frustrated in their efforts to find a shelf in the commercial marketplace, while the program Diversities offers multiple opportunities for the presentation of new or neglected voices to the national readership of The Reader Conversation. There will also be programs for poets and writers for performance, and we’ll always be listening particularly for voices from regional, rural and remote Australia.
We acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of the lands upon which we work and live. We pay our respects to Elders, past, present and future, as well as all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples – their Country, Culture, and Community.
