Singapore Writers Festival starts this 22 October to 30 October and comes just weeks before NaNoWriMo. Their calendar is packed with workshops, lectures and meet the author sessions. Check out their list of programmes and their calendar of events.

Here are some noteworthy events that are definitely worth checking out. They’re very reasonably priced and if you’re looking for something to do over the next couple of weekends in October, check these events out.

22 Oct /2011
5:00 pm – 6:00 pm
Steven Levitt Economics/ Freakonomics
Featuring: Steven Levitt
Venue: Concert Hall, School of the Arts
Rate: $40

Steven Levitt has a PhD in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is the William B. Ogden Distinguished Service Professor in Economics and the College at the University of Chicago. He co-authored the non-fiction bestseller, Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything (2005), and its 2009 sequel, SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance. Meet the man in person at his SWF lecture, where he will speak about economics and the term “freakonomics”.

28 Oct /2011
8:00 pm – 9:00 pm
Hackwork: Using Craft to Sell Madness for Cash
Featuring: Michael Chabon
Venue: Drama Theatre, School of the Arts
Rate: $30

Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Michael Chabon (The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay) has been described as “a flat-out wonderful writer” (Chicago Tribune), who “has been producing pitch-perfect, at times even dazzling, fiction” (Los Angeles Times). His other novels include Wonder Boys, which was made into a film, and The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, which won the Nebula and Hugo awards for Best Novel in 2008. His SWF lecture is enticingly titled, “Hackwork: Using Craft to Sell Madness for Cash”.

30 Oct /2011
9:30 am – 11:30 am
Screenwriting 101
Featuring: Lee Shinho
Venue: Seminar Room 2-4, School of Information Systems, Singapore Management University
Rate: $30

What moves and excites an audience? In this workshop, participants will have a glimpse of how to build feature-film stories. Through lecture, discussion and viewing of film clips, they will have a chance to explore the basic principles of storytelling for film and learn how to incorporate them in their own writing. Some of the subjects that will be covered include character, conflict, structure, visual narrative and dialogue.

30 Oct /2011
6:00 pm – 7:00 pm
Building Other Worlds – The Fundamentals of Writing Science Fiction
Featuring: Joe Haldeman
Venue: Seminar Room 2-4, School of Information Systems, Singapore Management University
Rate: $15

Award-winning Joe Haldeman will share with participants how they can write and sell science fiction, and what makes a compelling novel in this distinct literary genre. Other questions that he will explore include: Is science fiction all made-up? And does the science all add up? Find out how you can incorporate real science into fiction and imagine worlds out of the ordinary.