IMS Writing Competition

This year, the Illawarra Multicultural Service and South Coast Writers Centre partnered up to run a writing competition, focused on the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against women. The program reached a spectacular 300 students through Writing and Art at TAFE, MAX Solutions, high schools, public schools, private schools and individual participants, resulting in over 60 high quality writing entries and 70 beautiful art entries. Assisting the adult writers were volunteers from SCWC, who acted as teachers and judges for the event.

All the winner’s hard work, including writers Fatima Sayed, Xiaoxue Li, and Mehdi Zameni, were rewarded with a prize-giving dinner in November with the teachers and many distinguished guests, including MP Stephen Jones and Lord Mayor Gordan Bradbury, to celebrate all their achievements. SCWC director Sarah Nicholson discussed the currently three-year ongoing partnership with IMS, including the publication of 2022 competition winners in the SCWC anthology ‘Mantle’. The theme of this year’s program is near and dear to her heart, as her PhD is in the area of women’s history and western literature. She described the history of women in writing, and how they lacked the same opportunities as men within the industry, including being less published, their achievements less recorded, and their work less likely to be curated in collections.

In contemporary times, we’ve levelled the playing field and women’s writing is extremely well represented across bookstores, libraries, and writer’s festivals, especially in Australia. However, this isn’t true for our sisters globally. Sarah reminded us of the 2023 Nobel Peace Prize winner, the Iranian feminist Narges Mohammadi who is held in ongoing detention for her fight against the oppression of women in her county. She embodies their call for "Women, life, freedom".

This competition and its theme is a crucial stepping stone to extending the opportunities we may take for granted to our newly arrived sisters from refugee and migrant backgrounds. Storytelling provides ways to find our own voices and tell our own stories, and for others to develop empathy and understanding through those stories. In short, writing is a way to further develop the already rich culture in Australia and help us make a positive impact on both the state of feminism and refugees.