October is one of my favourite months – for the past six years, the first week of the month has meant travelling to Newcastle for This is Not Art festival (TiNA), the pinnacle of creative events in Australia. TiNA combines three independent festivals – Crack Theatre Festival, Critical Animals and (my personal favourite) the National Young Writers’ Festival.

For me, each year travelling to TiNA is like embarking on a journey to my creative happy place – a big reunion with some of my favourite people from across Australia, and a chance to soak in ideas, innovation and exciting new work to bring back a head full of inspiration to Canberra at the end of it.

I’ll be speaking at several events for the National Young Writers’ Festival, so check out our twitter for ongoing updates from Newcastle over the weekend.

This month on Feminartsy is going to be big and creative too, in honour of TiNA.

We kick things off with a profile of No Lights No Lycra in Canberra, celebrating the growth of the least pretentious dance community I’ve ever come across.

Looking ahead, we have fiction from exciting writers Shannon McKeough and Angela Christie-Wilkes, and memoir from the amazing Adelaide Reif.

I’m very excited to feature poetry from Zenobia Frost, and there’s art too – details coming soon!

On October 15, we have a special panel event at The Front Gallery & Café in Lyneham – ‘Who needs feminism?’. Myself and panellists Yen Eriksen, Renee Jones and Tasnim Hossain will be pulling apart the toxic myth that feminism is dead. Make sure you come along!

Finally, there is some exciting news to share – I’m excited to welcome Chiara Grassia on board as our new sub-editor. You’ll see more of Chiara’s hand on the website and social media soon – and I’m thrilled to have a partner in crime.

As usual, please send pitches and queries through to me at editor.feminartsy@gmail.com. I can’t guarantee a prompt reply, but it will be friendly.

X

Zoya