writer | performer | educator/trainer | arts/event specialist
Photo credit: Jamie Kidston
Simon Clews works with writers and academics around the world to help them improve their written and oral communication and develop their careers as effective communicators and providers of creative, well-written non-fiction for non-academic audiences. He does this both in-person and online, and is one of the most in-demand trainers in this field. He is currently a Learning Advisor at the Australian National University, a world leading and innovative university based in Canberra, where he works with HDR candidates on their writing and communication skills. Prior to this, for fifteen years he was the Director of the Melbourne Engagement Lab at Australia’s highest ranked university, Melbourne University, where enhanced the reputation of through training, encouraging and facilitating some of Australia’s brightest minds to make their work accessible to non-academic audiences.
If you are interested in seeing the sort of training Simon can offer, the organizations he has worked with or would like to discuss working with him, you can read more here.
And, if you’re looking for books designed to help academics write, communicate and engage with the outside
world, Simon is the author of The New Academic – out right now with NewSouth Books in Australia and SourceBooks in the US, and Be Visible or Vanish – co-written with Thesis Whisperer Mewburn and available now from Routledge. For more information, check out the books page.
In keeping with his passion for researchers communicating their stories to as wide an audience as possible, Simon is a huge supporter of the Three Minute Thesis competition. He often says that 3MT season is his favourite time of the year. He has been heavily involved in the competition from the outset and offers one-on-one and group training for competitors. Five years ago he wrote a guide to the competition, Your Time Starts Now! (Thesis Whisperer Books) to help participants get a bit of a competitive edge in their local 3MT and this year has produced a completely revised edition wh
ich (in an out-of-character fit of generosity) he is giving away for free! Download your copy here.
Prior to taking on the inaugural directorship of the Melbourne Engagement Lab, Simon took the fledgling Melbourne Writers’ Festival and over fourteen years placed it firmly on the world stage. After that for many years Simon was Creative Program Director for Melbourne’s Reader’s Feast book store producing ten iterations of Crime & Justice, a celebration of crime writing and social justice, and the History Writers Festival. And his literary event experience extends well beyond his time as Festival Directorand CEO of Melbourne Writers’ Festival and his work with Reader’s Feast – Simon was responsible for programming Stories Alive, a large-scale celebration of writing for children at Hamer Hall, Writers on Collins, a city precinct literary program and two site-specific literary celebrations – Writers at the Convent and Writers at Como. In total he has staged nearly forty major literary events, in addition to dozens and dozens of smaller events, and has presented well over 3,000 writers to a combined audience of nearly half a million book lovers. Put simply – Simon knows books, writing and events!
While Simon has had his fair share of praise and accolades over the years, some are more memorable than others; in 2002 the French Government honoured Simon’s contribution to the promotion of French culture in Australia by awarding him the French Flair Award. As well as some very flattering speeches, a meal to die for and much kissing on both cheeks, he received a bronze casting of Degas’ La Danseuse from the Louvre and a magnum of Pol Roger. The statue still proudly adorns a shelf in his office. The Pol Roger – sadly – is long gone.
And these days, very, very occasionally, Simon rediscovers his theatrical roots and steps back on stage to perform First Edition.
If you haven’t read enough about Simon here, you can read the back story to all this here.
