Formed nine years ago by a group of local writers headed by poet Ron Pretty, the centre is financially supported by the NSW Government through Arts NSW and also receives assistance from Wollongong City Council and the University of Wollongong.

Cassie Charlton is its operations manager who describes herself as “a jack of all trades” and who helps sell the centre, which attracts members from Austinmer to the Victorian border as well as the Southern Highlands.

There are currently 250 financial members, with 1030 people on its database. The current membership ranges from teenagers to one member who is in her 80s.

The centre is located on the top floor of the Wollongong Town Hall. It offers master classes in poetry, editing and writing, each of which is supervised by a recognised author and recently ran a panel discussion “Writing and Politics”, which was held at the School of Arts in Nowra.

Cassie says we have a great poetry community with many works being published in recent times. Board member Shady Cosgrove had her first book published recently and it will be officially launched at Wollongong City Art Gallery in September.

Over the past two months the centre has run courses on fiction writing, short story writing, creative and critical works. The centre is also home to an indigenous writers circle that has toured its Writers Night, “Celebrating the Voice”, across NSW for the past nine years.

Spreading the word

Cassie says the centre is about to undertake a promotional campaign in an effort to get more people involved.

The centre would like to be better connected with younger people and will be getting in touch with local schools where studies on film and literacy are already common practice but, as Cassie suggests, “more can be done in this area”.

Writing can be a lonely experience, she says, and the centre is there to help people meet and exchange stories and to assist each other in their literary efforts.

You can learn more about the centre by calling Cassie on 4228 0151 or logging into its web site on http://www.1earth.net/~scwc