PAST RESIDENCIES & PROGRAMS

Bundanon Group Retreat 2025

This week-long retreat at Bundanon Homestead allowed eight emerging or established South Coast writers to focus on developing or completing works. While participants primarily spent their days working on individual projects, this retreat was also designed as a supportive group retreat that enabled writers to work and learn together via daily peer-led discussion. Participants read from and discussed their work in a public forum at Bundanon Art Museum at the end of the week.

Residents were Alyssa Montgomery, Susie Fagan, Linda Albertson, Caroline Baum, Ryan Butta, Megan Cartwright, Belinda Lopez, and Frankie Adkins.

Nan Tien Residency 2024

Writers on the South Coast, or connected to Nan Tien Temple, were invited to apply for a 2024 residency at Nan Tien Temple.   

Applicants were invited to show how the development of their writing would benefit from this residency, and a proposal for a new work developed during the residency to respond to the Nan Tien temple, its gardens, buildings and community life, or Master Hsing Yun’s poetry. 

Residents were Laura Golding, Megan Cartwright, Paris Rosemont, Kerri Shying, Peter Frankis, Emily Tran, Frances Olivia, Jamie Derkenne, Jackie Bailey, Siobhan Doran-Chaston, Shady Cosgrove, and David Stavanger.

The Writers Studio Residency 2023–24

The Writers Studio was a dedicated office studio space for writers managed by the SCWC as part of Wollongong City Council’s Creative Wollongong Studios program, located in Wollongong Town Hall.

The SCWC offered residency space from January 2023 – April 2024. Residents included Mitch Jennings, who developed his debut novel A Town Called Treachery as part of the program, Sky Carrall, Tonya Lee, and Lajos Hamers.

Emerging Writers Program 2021 

This 2021 by-application program offered four outstanding emerging South Coast writers the opportunity to develop new works of fiction via a focused three-month program of development led by Hayley Scrivenor. The selected participants attended two intensive weekend workshops and undertook twelve weeks of online development and feedback on manuscripts, culminating in the participants being invited to be part of one of the SCWC’s public readings.

2021 Selected Emerging Writers: Sky Carrall, Suzanne Do, Emily Gray and Sara Rich.

Emerging Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Writers Program 2021

Led by writer Judi Morison, in 2021 the SCWC Emerging Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Writers Mentoring Program selected two recipients for a tailored three-month mentoring program with an established author.

Tabatha Cann was mentored by Rowena Lennox, editor, academic and author of Fighting Spirit of East Timor and Dingo Bold, as well as of poetry, essays, memoir and short fiction. Sharyn McDonagh's mentor was Dr Bambi Ward, educator in Indigenous Health with a PhD in Creative Writing.