GACL Writers’ Group & Workshops with Angela Costi George and Monika Athanasiou

The Greek Australian Cultural League (GACL) has started a writers’ group in order to help nurture and foster the literary hopes and dreams of the Greek Australian and Philhellene diaspora. In order to get this project off the ground, two initial workshops were organised, which were facilitated by writer and poet, Angela Costi.

In the first workshop, participants reacted to prints of paintings and to poems centred around objects. They also wrote about objects that were significant in their lives.  For homework, they were asked to develop the pieces begun at the workshop or write stories of empathy about their forebearers. Before the second workshop, the participants received one-to-one feedback on their work from Angela.

The second workshop involved reading poems that channelled empathy as well as analysis of participants’ work. Two examples were looked at in terms of feedback and all participants had a chance to share the work they had produced in their own time.

The organisers hope that the writers’ group will meet on a monthly basis and that it grows and expands to become a mainstay within the Greek-Australian writers’ community which has many talented and emerging writers in its realms.