About
The Melbourne School of Literature offers courses in literature and writing both in-person in Melbourne on the land of the Wurundjeri people and online via Zoom.
The MSL was formed during the lockdowns of the pandemic summer of 2021/22. During this time, teaching and learning grew online, while universities went through another round of massive restructuring and layoffs.
The MSL is letting go of the university’s demand for “knowledge” and holding on to the desire to read and write, producing our own knowledge in the process.
The MSL incorporated as a not-for-profit association in 2024. Its members are Dr. Eva Birch (President), Dr. Lucy Van (Vice-President), Sam Moginie (Secretary), Dr. Melinda Bufton (Treasurer), and Dr. George Mouratidis (Committee Member).
Past courses
MSL Summer School 2025
How to think like a poet: 1,2,3
Lecturer: Pi.O.
The expression of everyone interested in making a new world’: Little Magazines in Australia
Lecturer: Brendan Casey
MSL Evening School Sem2 2024
TheoryGirl™ goes to Canberra
Lecturer: Stephen Muecke
John Milton: Print, Poetry, Revolution
Lecturer: Ruby Lowe
MSL Sem1 2024
“Mind is shapely, Art is shapely”: Practicing Beat Poetics
Lecturer: George Mouratidis
MSL Summer School 2024
Moodboarding Melbourne
Lecturers: Elese Dowden & Gareth Morgan
Poetry as Magic
Lecturer: Daniel Pilkington
MSL Evening School Sem2 2023
Metaphysical Poetry
Lecturer: Emmalea Russo
Marxist Adventures in Poetry
Lecturer: Elena Gomez
MSL Evening School Sem1 2023
The Will to Style: critical seminars on the false problems of fiction
Lecturer: Ursula Robinson-Shaw
Creative Writing Workshop: Narrative Prose
Lecturers: Ursula Robinson-Shaw & Jack Kirne
MSL Summer School 2023
Love Poetry
Lecturer: Lucy Van
Elegiac Poetry: Who Mourns and How
Lecturer: Autumn Royal
MSL Evening School Sem2 2022
Visiting Authors: Transnationalism and Australian Literary History
Lecturer: Brendan Casey
MSL Winter School 2022
The Poetics of Rebellion in Australasia
Lecturer: Elese Dowden
Nietzsche’s Children: The Nietzschean Impulse & the 20th Century Avant-Garde
Lecturer: Thomas Moran
Rilke’s Sonnets to Orpheus: the sound of modernity
Lecturer: Eva Birch
Genealogy of postcritique: the critic, the university, and the crisis of crisis
Lecturer: Michael Graham