As always the illustrious Neil Gaiman offers wise and inspiring words, this time from his popular commencement speech at The University of the Arts in 2012.

How do you defy a reader’s expectations while still fulfilling them? — C.S. Pacat on the challenges of writing genre fiction.

This was just one of the many nuggets of wisdom I picked up over the course of a day at the Emerging Writers’ Festival in Melbourne last June. For those who weren’t there, I thought I’d share some of the highlights and insights from each talk.