Join us for a brand new Express Media program putting community building and networking front and centre for young writers, artists and playwrights!
Our new 2021 initiative, Left to Write, is an online 6 week writing group, workshop and community program that aims to connect writers and encourage accountability.
This program series provides an opportunity for emerging writers and artists to workshop their work, create a community with other young creatives, and will also – over weekly one hour meetups online – see young writers meet with an writer, artist and/or editor to hone their skills, participate in creative exercises, share resources, develop a regular working practice and receive encouragement/guidance. The 2021 program includes streams in poetry, fiction, non-fiction, playwriting and graphic narratives with twenty writers in each stream.
Our Community Facilitators
Hasib Hourani is a Palestinian writer, editor, and arts worker living on unceded Wurundjeri Country. Their writing worries expectations of land, identity, and the relationship between the two. Hasib has been programmed at Emerging Writers’ Festival, Digital Writers’ Festival, National Young Writers’ Festival, and Freeplay, among others. Hasib is a 2020 recipient of The Wheeler Centre’s Next Chapter Scheme, and you can find their work in Meanjin, Overland, Australian Poetry, and Going Down Swinging, among others.
T-Dog eXtreme (or Lauren, I guess) is an all round legend, and occasional artist. Their huge passion for uncomfortably paced realistic dialogue gives them a unique edge when coming into multifaceted works like games and graphic narratives. In recent times, Lauren has had their comic ‘Donut Blood’ published in Voiceworks’ ‘root’ issue. As well as having finished the illustrations for the card game ‘Trapeze!’ created in order to open a conversation up about computer literacy to elderly and rural Australians. For this non-binary creator, if it’s not global warming first, games and graphic narratives remain in their future.
Claire Cao is a writer, editor and critic living on Dharug land. She edits fiction for Voiceworks and is a member of Sweatshop: Western Sydney Literacy Movement. You can find her work in publications such as Filmmaker, The Lifted Brow, Kill Your Darlings, SBS Life, Running Dog and The Big Issue. She was the runner-up of the inaugural 2019 Liminal Fiction Prize and recently worked on the feature film Here Out West.
Fleur Kilpatrick is an award-winning playwright, a director and educator, focused on building a kinder, more sustainable theatre community. Her plays have won the Max Afford (Whale, 2018), Jill Blewett (Blessed, 2016), the inaugural Helen Noonan Award (Whale, 2019) and the Melbourne Fringe Best Emerging Playwright Award. She holds a postgraduate diploma of directing and a Masters in playwriting from the VCAM. She was a lecturer at Monash University for five years and, in 2020, won the Monash Student Association (MSA) award for Excellence in Teaching in the Arts Faculty. As an academic, she researches how to teach care to theatre makers and as a playwright she writes theatre of climate change.
Image credit – Sarah Walker.
Maddie Godfrey is a Perth-bred writer, poet, editor, educator and emotional feminist, who uses storytelling to facilitate compassionate conversations about social issues. At 25, they have performed poetry at The Sydney Opera House, The Royal Albert Hall, TedXWomen, St Paul’s Cathedral and Glastonbury Festival (2017). Their debut collection ‘How To Be Held’ (Burning Eye Books, 2018) is a manifesto to tenderness. In 2018-2019, Maddie worked with Propel Youth Arts WA as the Creative Coordinator of Youth Week WA. In 2019 they were an Associate Producer for Express Media’s ‘Making Tracks’ program. In late 2020, Maddie was awarded a writer-in-residence position by The National Trust of Western Australia.
Image credit – Rachel Barrett.
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Left to Write is generously supported by Creative Victoria.
