Facilitated by The Write Folk, the Society of Australian Genealogists Creative Writing Program aims to teach creative writing tools and techniques, to use in conjunction with genealogical and social history research. With these skills, each Program participant will craft a unique, personal and entertaining short story. At the end of the Program, SAG will publish the short stories as a volume, in honour of the women who built and nurtured colonial Australia

The Program will be structured around a series of creative writing exercises and story milestones. There will be a monthly Zoom session for learning and collaboration, along with a private discussion forum to ask questions, post exercises and provide feedback. A key component of the Program will be peer-to-peer feedback. This will be moderated, and feedback templates supplied. Participants will also receive guidance and feedback from the facilitator on each exercise, and at key stages of the story drafting and editing processes.

Theme of stories: the women of colonial Australia

Each participant will select one of their own female colonial ancestors and write a 4,000 to 5,000 word creative short story, based on their life and social history of the time.

Note: For the purposes of this program the term colonial covers the period 1788-1901.

Participation in the course will be limited to 15, in order to produce a publishable volume.

Once published, each participant will receive the e-book and one printed copy as part of their Program fee. The e-book and print on demand copies will also be promoted through SAG and available for a fee.

The detailed program schedule can be downloaded by clicking here

The Write Folk

Rose Cutts has worked across the print media, music and tertiary education sectors in a career spanning 25 years. Her time in print media included roles in advertising, sub-editing, copywriting, and several years editing a quarterly fiction publication. In the music industry, she focused on tour and travel logistics, and event management. For the last 14 years Rose has worked in a variety of roles in universities, including academic skills support, tertiary pathways, and quality assurance. Her particular areas of expertise include educational compliance, continuous improvement, academic governance, and policy development. All Rose’s roles have had a significant focus on writing, editing and proofreading, and never more so than in the last 6 years managing mandatory professional accreditations at Western Sydney University. In this capacity, Rose researches and collects large amounts of professional and academic information, synthesising and producing long form submission documents. She also regularly authors, edits and publishes executive papers, web content, briefings and research studies. Rose conducts training programs in a number of areas including professional writing skills, cyclical continuous improvement processes, and developing and implementing strategic plans.

Rose holds a Bachelor of Arts (mjrs. English and Modern History, mnr. Linguistics) (UNE), and a Graduate Certificate in Tertiary Education (Quality Assurance) (UniMelb). Through undertaking these studies, along with a number of creative writing programs, Rose has developed a keen interest and focus on blending historical fact and creative story telling. Rose established The Write Folk to bring together her academic background, professional experience, and creative writing endeavours to offer copywriting, proofreading and genealogical support services. The Write Folk services include:

• Developing and facilitating family and social history, and writing programs, covering creative writing and creative non-fiction;
• Genealogical research, presented in a narrative style and with social history details;
• Editing and proofreading professional documents, web content, etc., and
• Records retrieval and transcription.