Asian Australian Writers Festival 2011- any takers?

I think the time is ripe for some sort of AA event and by that I don't mean jiggling around in your ethnic dress, although you're more than welcome to (the general rule being: the less cloth and more cuts, the better).  Originally I was thinking of a general Asian Australian Festival but ended up concluding that this event was way too broad.

Perhaps it would be better to start off with a smaller, cosier event, still with a large target audience though.

The type of event that came to my mind straight away is a writers festival, because if there's something our "community" churns out a lot of, it's writers.  So here's my rough outline for such an event.  I'll also forward some parts of this message to various AA writers to see what their comments are and to gauge their interest levels.

Location
Sydney and Melbourne have the largest number of Asians so it's a no-brainer that the first event ought to be in one of these cities to maximise target audience.  In addition, I think that most writers are based in these cities or close by, and it would be convenient to travel to the event.  Accommodation would not be much of a problem.

Venue
A venue with a main hall and one presentation/lecture room should suffice.  The presentation room would be used for talks while the hall would have stalls setup to display the books of the writers, and be a place where they can talk with fans, autograph books etc.

Time and Date
Whole day
Possibly around a festive season or towards the end of the year in Oct/Nov.  Possibly piggyback onto another event.

Invitees
Here's my list of invitees, of course it's only a guide.  A few of them have released new books recently or will be doing so soon, so it will be a good platform to promote their books and connect with fans.

Shaun Tan
Alice Pung
Nam Le
Cindy Pan
Tom Cho
Benjamin Law

Auto/Bios
Anh Do
Natalie Hooker (LJ Hooker Bio due out late 2010)

Children's writers
Gabrielle Wang
Oliver Phommavanh
Chris Cheng

Upcoming Writers/"Indie" writers
many.

AA Personalities
One or two for a bit of zing
Any contestant from Masterchef
Luke Nguyen
Anyone with a book to flog
etc

Of course not all writers will be able to make it, possibly due to the following reasons
1) Conflicting schedules
2) May find it a hassle to go to an event if it's in another city
3) New to AA brand or may not want to associate with it so openly

Really, six prominent writers are all we need to make the first event a success.

Comps
- Door prizes
- Writing Comp

Costs
- Hire the venue
- Equipment
- Tables for stalls
- Advertising
- Website setup
- Presentation/posters
- Food
- Sponsors

Free entry

Volunteers

Talk Topics
Open for discussion

Feedback
Ask attendees to fillout feedback forms

Advertising Methods
- Website
- Word of mouth
- Facebook, Twitter
- Local newspaper
- Ethnic newspapers
- SBS radio
- Various Asian organisations (Chung Wah etc)
- Publishers
- Blogs

Anyway, I'll edit this post into some sort of email and send it to various writers.   If you have any comments then feel free to post below or email to me.  I don't have access to blogger/facebook/twitter and I can only post via email atm (I can't even edit posts).