Poets’ Group: Meets every 1st and 3rd Thursday evening of the month, From 5.30pm to 7.30/8.00pm, Group contact: Mark Liston
Prose Writers’ Group: Meets every 2nd and 4th Thursday evening of the month, From 5.30pm to 7.30/8.00pm
Women @ the Lock Up Writers Group: Friday mornings - currently closed until March 2012. Please let us know if you are interested.
ABOUT THESE WRITING GROUPS:
Poets’ Group: The poets group is our longest running group though it has seen quite a few changes of members over the years. Currently it has settled into a strong, supportive and committed group. In 2011 it has decided to capitalise on this commitment and introduce an addition to their skills development focus by bringing in a recognised poet once every 2 months to run an intimate class for the group in an area of practice. They will self-fund this initiative as they feel it will contribute to the development of their work. The focus on producing new work remains their goal and they will look at submitting the fruit of their labours to a rolling series of competitions throughout the year. This group is serious about ‘the gym’ workout aspect and getting results.
Prose Writers’ Group: This group has also provided a clear focus on the work. Most recently this saw each members producing a short fiction to submit to the Wet Ink 2010 Short Story competition. This proved successful for one of the members, Mark Liston, who had his work short listed from some 600 entries and will see it published in a special edition of Wet Ink later this year (we all feel a glow from this as we saw it develop over the months). Another highlight last year was the visit by Cate Kennedy to the group, so if you don’t want to miss out on whatever happens next, join and benefit. Once again this group will focus on producing prose and explore aspects of craft through targeted exercises. With the departure of Brian from his role as Director this group will also see a new contact person - for the moment its Brian and more of his idiosyncratic and challenging exercises.
Women @ the Lock Up Writers Group: Recognising that this group has mainly seen women members in the past it is claiming its identity in 2011 and using it as a basis to develop a specific program of exercises and events exploring “the Woman Writer’s Voice”. While still having space for a cuppa and quick catch-up chat on writing and reading highlights, this year, Women @ the Lock-up, will be more structured with plans of undertaking a group project: The Voice of Hunter Women Writers’. We will explore famous women authors and through inspiration, hopefully, some of us will discover or re-discover our own unique style. Also with a recognised pool of competitions specifically for women there will be a focus on providing work for these. As well this group will see visits from the two women writers in residence at the Lock Up in 2011; Noelle Janaczewska and Talya Rubin. This group moves from Thursdays to Fridays and finds itself re-energised so if you are looking for a charge, here it is.
