PAST RESIDENCIES & PROGRAMS
Nan Tien Residency
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.
The Writers Studio Residency
The Writers Studio is a dedicated office studio space for writers managed by the SCWC as part of Wollongong City Council’s Creative Wollongong Studios program.
Located in the Wollongong Town Hall, The Writers Studio is a lockable private space available 24/7. It comes with basic furnishing (desk, chair, lamp) and will be yours to make a comfortable space. There is a common area with a kitchenette, lounge and a bathroom. N.B. The complex does not offer wifi.
The SCWC offered one residency space from January 2023 - April 2024.
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 & Sara Rich.
Program Leader
Hayley Scrivenor is a writer and former Director of Wollongong Writers Festival. She lives and writes on Dharawal country. Hayley’s fiction and non-fiction have appeared in a range of Australian literary journals and she was shortlisted for the Overland Story Wine prize. She was awarded the 2019 Ray Koppe/ASA Fellowship for her novel about a young girl who goes missing from a small country town. In 2020, this manuscript was shortlisted for the Penguin Literary Prize and won the Kill Your Darlings Unpublished Manuscript Award. Hayley recently completed her PhD in Creative Writing at the University of Wollongong.
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.
Program Leader Judi Morison is of Gamilaroi heritage. A writer of fiction, poetry and creative nonfiction, her work has been published in a number of literary journals and she has a Master of Arts in Creative Writing from UTS.