Whether you are new to poetry, or wish to develop your craft, this workshop is for you. Be inspired: write from a poetry prompt and leave the session with a new or refined poem. If you wish, you can sign up for Sounding Out Loud on the Saturday evening of the RSWWF, to recite your newly created poem in a relaxed and welcoming soiree of spoken word at The Women’s Club. Accomplished page poet and theatrical performance poet Paris Rosemont will guide you from the page to the stage in this workshop.

Paris Rosemont is an award-winning Asian-Australian poet. Her poetry has found eclectic homes from international literary journals and anthologies, through to quirky underground zines. Her niche is theatrical performance poetry. She has appeared at the Sydney Fringe Festival, world premiere of Slam Messiah 2022, Ubud Writers & Readers Festival 2023, and Short+Sweet Festival Illawarra 2023 where she was awarded Best Script. Her debut collection, Banana Girl, was shortlisted for the Dame Mary Gilmore Award 2024, and the Society of Women Writers NSW Poetry Book Award 2024. Her second poetry collection, Barefoot Poetess, published by WestWords Books, reclaims the word “Poetess”, and a woman's fierce allegiance to her body, sexuality, her selfhood.

Alexandria (Ally) Burnham is an AWGIE (Australian Writers Guild) award-winning screenwriter, novelist and writer of comics. She is best known for her feature film Unsound (Apple, 2020), which was nominated for best original feature at the 2020 AWGIE awards. A romantic-drama, the film won best Australian feature at the 2020 Melbourne Queer Film Festival and best fiction feature film at the 2020 ATOM Awards. Ally is the lead writer for Metropius (2021), a multi-media story world told across animation, comic books and board games produced by 18 Degrees. Her screenplay won Most Outstanding Animation at the 2022 AWGIE Awards. The first and second issues of her comic book, Forgotten Rose, are out now. Her debut novel, Swallow, is slated for release November 2025.