'Twas a warm and dry winter in July 2014 when hundreds of English and Literacy educators gathered on the red soil of the Larrakeyah people in the city known as Darwin in the governance area of the Northern Territory to continue their conversations and learnings about their field of practice. The AATE/ALEA conference planning committee, led by Helen Chatto (ALEA NT State Director) and John Oakman (ETANT President), invited national and international keynote speakers to hold court about the conference theme of ‘aNTicipating new territories: building strong minds, places and futures’. Eight articles within this volume of the Australian Journal of Language and Literacy (AJLL) are written recounts of these keynote sessions delivered by Peter Freebody (University of Sydney), Kathryn Glasswell (California State University, USA), Jennifer Rennie (Monash University), Janet Scull (Monash University), Lisa Kervin (University of Wollongong), Beryl Exley (Queensland University of Technology), Jill Spector-Lewis (New Jersey City University, USA) and Robyn Ewing (University of Sydney). An additional article by Jeffrey Wilhelm (Boise State University, USA) is included, although his conference keynote was not delivered due to an unexpected and rather serious personal matter which precluded him from travelling to Darwin in July 2014. ; Full Text