If you missed out on purchasing a copy of Ink 4 at the Centenary Lunch on 10 September, it’s not too late! To order Ink 4, click here: https://www.trybooking.com/DCQVM. To save on postage, come along to a workshop and/or literary event and pick it up.
Ink 4 is an anthology of four years of prize-winning fiction, creative non-fiction and poetry, published to celebrate the Centenary of the Society of Women Writers NSW Inc.
Pricing – $20.00 each plus postage or collect in person at an SWW event. For orders of more than one book, please email SWW President to discuss postage or delivery options.
Please note:
- Due to the Library’s renovations, these events will be held in the Michael Crouch room, on Level 1, instead of in the Dixson Room. Level 1 is accessible by lift or stairs at both ends of the building.
- The cafe is now back where it belongs – Ground Floor, Macquarie Street Building.
Please book for the Workshop and/or Literary Event by Monday 9 March.
Workshop
Time: 10:15 am to 12:00 pm
Place: Michael Crouch Room, State Library of NSW
Cost: Members $40, non-members $55
Patti Miller: Travel Memoir – Wish You Were Here
Travel writing is a wide and rich genre, encompassing memoir, history, geography, politics, cultural knowledge and the inner journey of the self. This short course will introduce you to the varieties of travel and sojourn memoir, and show you how to ‘pack your travel-writing suitcase’ so that you include unique perception and intriguing knowledge, and leave out worn clichés and formulaic responses. We will read some travel writing extracts, discuss ideas and try a short travel writing exercise. Whether you have travelled the world, or are planning to, this course will equip you to bring your inner and outer travels to life on the page. It will be based on Patti’s extensive travel writing experience and notes on travel writing in Patti’s text Writing True Stories, Routledge 2024.
Patti is the author of ten books, including Australia’s best-selling life writing texts, Writing Your Life, The Memoir Book (Allen & Unwin) and Writing True Stories (Routledge) as well as a novel Child (A&U) and memoir/creative nonfiction, The Last One Who Remembers (A&U), Whatever The Gods Do (Random House), the critically acclaimed The Mind of a Thief, (UQP) long- and short-listed for a number of prizes, winner of the 2013 NSW Premier’s Prize for History, Ransacking Paris (UQP), The Joy of High Places (NewSouth), True Friends (UQP) and her latest, the new edition of Writing True Stories, released in 2024. She is published regularly in literary journals and national newspapers and magazines including the SMH, The Guardian, The Age and The Australian. She has been a judge for the NSW Premier’s Prize and the State Library’s Russell Prize for Humour Writing. She appears at writers’ festivals including Adelaide, Sydney and Byron Bay. She is Australia’s most successful memoir teacher and has taught life writing around Australia for 35 years – and in Paris and London each year. Nearly 70 of her former students have been commercially published. Website: www.lifestories.com.au
Literary Event
Time: 1:00 pm to 2:30 pm
Place: Michael Crouch Room, State Library of NSW
Cost: Members $25, non-members $40
Member Spotlight
Robyn McWilliam: Against the Breeze
Robyn will cover many aspects of life writing. She joined the Society of Women Writers in 1996 after being published in No Thanks or Regrets following their biography competition. In 1998 she attended her first Patti Miller course in this genre and continued writing life stories. Whilst completing Patti Miller’s Life Writing in Paris in 2015, she was encouraged to gather all her stories into a memoir which became Against the Breeze.
Robyn began writing for sailing magazines in the 1980s. She attended Creative Writing courses and in 1990 completed a Diploma in Book Editing and Publishing. This led to 28 years of teaching Creative Writing to adults. Against the Breeze, a memoir, is her fifth book after two anthologies and two novels.
Guest Speaker
Colleen Keating: Ring the Bells – Book Launch
Libby Hathorn
in conversation with
Colleen Keating
will launch Colleen’s poetry book
Ring the Bells
In Ring the Bells, award-winning poet Colleen Keating invites readers to listen closely – to the chimes of joy, the tolls of grief and the quiet notes of love that echo through our shared human experience.
Moving through four sections – Embracing Light, Embracing Dark, Embracing Life, Embracing Love – her poems ring with an acute awareness of the world’s beauty and its brokenness.
From intimate moments in nature to the great sweep of history and current events, Keating’s lyrical voice finds hope, tenderness and resilience in the spaces where light filters through the cracks.
Colleen Keating has published eight books of poetry, including the best-selling Hildegard of Bingen: A Poetic journey (Ginninderra Press 2019).
She has won numerous awards and her poems have been published nationally and internationally. Her writing explores the paradox and wonder of nature, the realities of life, equality, justice and the increasing threat to our natural environment.
Colleen writes on Ku-ring-gai land in Sydney and Darkinjung land on the Central Coast.
Libby Hathorn is an award-winning author and poet of more than eighty books for children, young adults and adult readers. Poetry is an abiding passion for her, and many of her works are written in poetry or inspired by poetry.
Libby is a keen educator who has lectured part-time at Sydney University and is devoted to being an ambassador for poetry anywhere and everywhere. She has been a National Ambassador for Reading and often acts as a judge for literary prizes, including the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards.
Book and pay:
Members, you can book for yourself and a friend at member pricing, if purchased at the same time.
Workshop: Members $40, non-members $55
If you have a Workshop Voucher, please email Julie Thorndyke, Workshop Coordinator, to advise your intention to attend.
Literary event: Members $25, non-members $40
Discount for full program (Workshop and Literary Event) when booked together:
Members $60, non-members $85
By Credit card: https://www.trybooking.com/DILTS
or by Direct debit:
The Society of Women Writers NSW Inc
BSB: 062 018
Account: 00950433
Code: VM
Email Amanda and include
your name, receipt number and date of event
Zoom ($10) will be available for this function – please click here to book: https://www.trybooking.com/DILTR