Margaret River Press

We are delighted to welcome David Morgan Carr and Jessica Radvan from ECU Bunbury who are assisting us at the Press with the design and production of a regional guide for kids.  David and Jessica are undertaking this project as part of their Community Writing class.  Both have designs skills and have had experience in  digital design.  We look forward to working with both David and Jessica.  Keep an eye out for the guide.

Richard Rossiter, one of the judges of the competition and Editor of last year's collection, was on hand to provide some helpful hints to writers at our event, "The Story Behind the Competition" at Barefoot Books in Busselton.  The Competition he spoke about, is the Margaret River Short Story Competition held annually in partnership with Arts Margaret River.  Last year the competition attracted 191 stories from all around Australia.  We are now calling for submissions for this year's competition and have put together a series of u-tube videos that provides you with some tips on how to write a winning story. Click on each item below to get to the u-tube.

Varuna is Australia's national residential writers' house in the former home of writers Elanor and Eric Dark.  It has a reputation for attracting and inspiring exciting new Australian writing and providing support for a thriving writing community.  Varuna also has a writer-a-day-blog which provides an opportunity for Varuna alumni to collaborate with Varuna on building an online writers' community. 

Our short story collection Things that are found in trees & other stories includes the question of morals and ethics alongside the trauma of dying in The Last Babushka Doll by Melbourne based author Georgina Luck.

Some of you would have seen the amazing surf photographs of Chris Gurney in our Chefs of the Margaret River Region and now on the Gourmet Escape website.  Well, this young talented photographer just keeps getting applauded, not only did his photograph of Taj Burrows surfing in Margaret River get the front cover of the June edition of US magazine Surfer, the September issue of Australia's oldest surfing magazine, Surfing World has an article about him.  Talented and unassuming, Chris says, " I shoot for myslef.  I struggle more with trying to better my images than I do thinking about other photographers.  If I ever stop it will be because I'm not enjoying it.  He owned his first camera when he was 13 and got his first photo published on the cover of Surfing World when he was 17.  We are lucky enough to have Chris shoot photos for us for our upcoming publication about the contribution made by surfers to the Margaret River Region.   Just watch this space for more information about the release date.

The Annual Margaret River Short Story Writing Competition is now open.  We are seeking submissions on any topic. The required word limit is between 1200-3000 words and the closing date is November 30, 2012.

We are very proud to announce that our first iBook has gone online.  The conversion of Chefs of the Margaret River Region was undertaken in partnership with the very talented team at Red Tiki. The book has been reviewed by Apple and is now listed in 32 countries.