Over three exciting days Australian and International WrICE writers came together for a reunion and to participate in Melbourne Writers Festival events.

On Friday 30 August, RMIT’s Urban Writing House hosted a friendly gathering and salon event for WrICE participants from across six years of the program to share food, drinks, and most importantly, stories.

The WrICE members were also joined by second year RMIT creative writing students from Sree Iyer’s collaborations studio The Particular is the Universal, as well as their collaborating counterparts, a talented group of emerging Singaporean writers.

It was a warm event for WrICE alumni to catch up with each other, exchange ideas, and celebrate each other’s work just before the launch of their second anthology, The Near and the Far, Volume 2. Throughout the day, the small room was full of intermingling local and international writers in a relaxed and supportive atmosphere.

Towards the latter half of the afternoon everyone gathered to listen to hear each other’s work. From finished pieces to works in-development the room travelled into the past, the future, and leapt from grave seriousness to humour, to heart-touching tenderness. The salon finished with Joshua Ip, and as his custom he read a freshly composed poem that was a snapshot of the unique collection of readings from that afternoon.

The next day, a packed audience experienced Writers Across Borders, an annual WrICE event as part of Melbourne Writers Festival, held this year at RMIT’s Kaleide Theatre. WrICE participants included Melissa Lucashenko, Bernice Chauly, Ali Cobby-Eckermann, Joshua Ip, Michele Lee, Fiona Murphy, Alvin Pang, Norman Erikson Pasaribu, Rajith Savanadasa, Christos Tsiolkas and Lavanya Shanbhogue Arvind.

Interwoven with powerful readings, amongst many topics the panel discussed borders, language, the power of writing, empathy, the healing qualities of books and communicating with consideration and understanding. The writers each responded to borders in their own way; but Christos offered a tentative way forward, saying that “borders don’t go away, but good faith enables you to speak through them.”

Writers Across Borders was followed by the launch of The Near and the Far, Volume 2 (Scribe). On Sunday 1 September Melbourne Writers Festival events continued with West Writers x Wrice: Craft at Footscray Community Arts Centre. After a six week pairing/co-mentorship program WrICE alumni and emerging Melbourne writers from the West Writers Group discussed their work and reflected on their experience.