Please book for the Workshop and/or Literary Event by Monday 7 September.
Creative Writing Workshop
(in person only)
Time: 10:15 am to 12:00 pm
Place: Michael Crouch Room, State Library of NSW
Cost: Members $40, non-members $55
Julie Thorndyke: Tanka: a little song of life
What is tanka? Do you need to count syllables? What about punctuation?
Julie Thorndyke, editor of Eucalypt: a tanka journal, will guide you through a workshop, outlining the basic conventions of writing contemporary tanka poems in English. Please bring your questions, draft tanka poems and/or notebook jottings to the workshop for a friendly morning of collaborative poetry sharing.
Julie Thornydyke dwells on a leafy knoll in Sydney. Current editor of Eucalypt: a tanka journal, Julie’s books include Mrs Rickaby’s Lullaby (adult novel), Divertimento (short stories), Borrowed Riches (tanka), Precipice (poetry), Turning the Calendar (tanka strings) and picture books Waiting for the Night, Watching through the Day, and Alice’s Shoe. https://juliethorndyke.com/
Literary Event
(in person and via Zoom)
Time: 1:00 pm to 2:30 pm
Place: Michael Crouch Room, State Library of NSW
Cost: Members $25, non-members $40
Member Spotlight
Lindsay Lewis: How a 16-Year-Old Book Became an International Success
Lindsay is an author, publisher, internet marketer and public speaker with extensive experience in product development, advertising and international marketing.
In 2010, Lindsay wrote The Inconvenient Child, the inspiring true life story of her close friend and entertainer Sharyn Killens. The book became a publishing success and sold around 18,000 paperback copies across Australia before, like many titles, its sales faded to the occasional copy on Amazon.
In 2025, refusing to let the book disappear, Lindsay completely rebuilt its Amazon listing, rewrote the sales copy, redesigned the listing and launched a simple but targeted Facebook advertising strategy. The result was a remarkable revival, taking a forgotten 16-year-old book to #2 Best Seller on Amazon African American Biographies and a total sales equivalent of more than 36,000 copies worldwide.
In this insightful presentation, Lindsay shares the practical marketing strategies that revived an ageing book and proved with the right positioning, compelling copy and targeted advertising, authors can give their own backlist titles a genuine second chance.
The Inconvenient Child has won the Society of Women Writers NSW Book Award for Non-Fiction and recently won Honorable Mention (4th Place) in Non-Fiction Biography of the 2025 Readers’ Favorite International Book Awards.
Lindsay self-published The Inconvenient Child under Miracle Publishing, a company she formed for the purpose.
Guest Speaker
Susan Wyndham: Finding Elizabeth Harrower
Harrower was an outstanding novelist of the mid-20th century but almost forgotten until her novels were reissued 50 years later. Susan Wyndham met the elusive author and became intrigued by the gaps in her story.
Susan is a journalist, writer and former literary editor of the Sydney Morning Herald. She is the author of several books, most recently Elizabeth Harrower: the woman in the watch tower (NewSouth, 2025) and co-editor with Brigitta Olubas of Hazzard and Harrower: the letters (NewSouth, 2024).
Book and pay:
Members, you can book for yourself and a friend at member pricing if purchased at the same time.
NEW for members – you can attend the Literary Event (not the Workshop) in your birthday month at no cost. Simply book via TryBooking and select the Birthday Month option. January birthdays (when there is no meeting) may attend free of charge in February.
Workshop (in person only): Members $40, non-members $55
If you have a Workshop Voucher, please email pippakay64@gmail.com, Workshop Coordinator, to advise your intention to attend.
Literary Event (in person): 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/DOYDO
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
Apologies but Zoom will not be available for this event.