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February Newsletter 2025

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Welcome to 2025!

We hope it’s going to be a successful year, and you have time to write, read and enjoy our workshops.


Coming up at FAWWA

On Saturday, February 8 at 10am at Mattie Furphy House, Rachel Hanson will be presenting ‘Getting Published’. Rachel is a Senior Editor at Fremantle Press and has granted FAWWA a rare opportunity for writers to hear direct from a publishing insider what publishers look for in a submitted manuscript.


This is the second such workshop Rachel is teaching for FAWWA. The first one in November sold out very quickly so don’t miss out on a spot this time.




The Book Length Project Group 

It is with great delight and excitement that we welcome the Book Length Project Group back to FAWWA. The group will be led by crime writer Karen Whittle-Herbert, author of The River Mouth (2021), The Castaways of Harewood Hall (2022), and Vertigo (2023).

Karen Whittle-Herbert’s fourth novel, The Ghost Walk, published by Fremantle Press, is coming out this year.


Writers of all genres who are working on a book-length manuscript are welcome to come along.


The Book Length Project Group will meet on the third Sunday of the month at 10am. The first meeting for 2025 will be on Sunday, February 16 from 10am to 12pm at Mattie Furphy House.


Don’t miss this opportunity for a fun morning working on your manuscript with a wonderful professional to guide you along the way.


Karen Herbert - Author
Karen Herbert - Author

Zimbabwean crime writer Ravayi Marindo to speak at Write Night

On February 18 at 6pm crime writer Ravayi Marindo from Zimbabwe will be the Tuesday Write Night guest author at Mattie Furphy House.


Marindo will talk about her life as a writer, about her life as a female writer in Zimbabwe, and also about what life is like in general in Zimbabwe today.


Ravayi Marindo has written three award-winning stories: Jacob's Tree, The Promise, The Catapult and The Medallion.


She is the author of six murder mystery novels including Frangipani in the Mist. She has also written a cookbook.


Amazon describes Ravayi Marindo as ‘Zimbabwe’s own queen of crime, Ravayi combines murder and romance. She believes that love normally thrives when a murderer is lurking in the shadows’.


The evening will be a fascinating and rare opportunity to hear what it is like to be a writer living and working in Zimbabwe today. Have your questions ready!


The Write Night group meets every second Tuesday of the month at Mattie Furphy House at 6pm. The group is convened by Marshall Willan.

For more information about Ravayi Marindo’s talk, or the Tuesday night Write Night, email fellowshipaustralianwriterswa@gmail.com



Workshop - How to Start Writing

Come along to the 'How to Start Writing' Workshop with Soraya Acosta Sanchez
Come along to the 'How to Start Writing' Workshop with Soraya Acosta Sanchez

On the February 22 emerging writer Soraya Acosta Sanchez will teach a workshop on ‘How to Start Writing’. Soraya is a romance fantasy writer from Venezuela. She enjoys writing novels in English and her native language of Spanish. She facilitates the Novel Writers Collective at KSP Writers Centre, co-directs a writing academy for Latin American writers in Australia, and is studying a Master of Creative Writing at Curtin University. Soraya will offer practical information relevant to all fiction genres.


Soraya’s workshop is the first in a series of three that will help you with your writing. The second workshop will be on developing characters and the third will be on world building.


Make use of the workshops to get your story underway for the Mattie Furphy Short Story competition. The short story competition has undergone a name change. To complement the Tom Collins Poetry Prize and in recognition of the writers’ houses that sit side by side, the committee recently voted to rename the Stuart and Hadow short story competition after Mattie Furphy.


The Mattie Furphy Short Story Competition - opening 22 February 2025

Mattie Furphy was artistic and renowned for her work in copper, which you will see when you visit Mattie Furphy and Tom Collins houses in Swanbourne. Her father-in-law, Joseph Furphy, who wrote as Tom Collins, described her the following way in a letter in 1909: ‘Mattie is painfully artistic. She spends all her spare time in repousse work - which is the hammering of sheet copper into grotesque and ugly relief of dragons, griffins, imps, etc. Which is the very highest Art’.


The Arts and Crafts movement came from Britain and was a reaction to the industrial revolution. In the spirit of the Arts and Crafts movement, of which Mattie was an accomplished exponent, we want to encourage everyone to show their artistic talent. But instead of hammering copper, we invite you to put your pen to paper, your hands to the keyboard, and create your short story for the competition.


The Mattie Furphy Short Story competition will open on February 22 and coincide with Soraya’s workshop on getting started on your writing.


Mattie Furphy pictured above left, blended with pictures of Mattie Furphy House and her copper repousse work.



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