The WrICE Residency

The WrICE residency brings together different writers at different stages of their careers from across the Asia-Pacific region to share and discuss their work in progress in a non-hierarchical, intercultural setting. The aim is not only to help foster individual writers and their careers, but to develop an informal transnational literary network, and enable new collaborations and cultural literacies. Writers invited to participate in the initial phase of WrICE face-to-face residencies (2014-18) came from 13 countries across the Asia-Pacific region, including Singapore, the Philippines, China, Indonesia, Vietnam, Papua New Guinea, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Japan and Australia. 

The WrICE residency invites writers to come together to connect with other writers, to share their work, stories, cultural contexts, writing practices, vulnerabilities, joys, successes and failures. The ten-day collaborative residency has a twin focus, both inwardly on the processes of writing, listening and reflection, and outwardly through a capstone program of public events co-created by the group: workshops, readings, panels and performances. 

So imagine a group of writers – from Brisbane and Kuala Lumpur, from Singapore, Yangon, Queanbeyan, and beyond – gathered together around a large dining table under a swishing ceiling fan in an old Penang apothecary. Or in a room above a river strung with yellow fishnets in Vietnam. One by one these writers take it in turns to share their writing, stories and art. They don't know each other. Everyone is awkward and embarrassed. They are offering the gift of their culture in its rawest, roughest form. The work is fresh and unfinished. (Carlin & Rendle-Short 2016) 

Asia-Pacific communities need to find our own sustainable ways of speaking among ourselves and relating to each other as cultural practitioners with mutual respect and a sense of vibrant possibility. Our young writers need to grow up with each other instead of merely side-by-side. As an alternative and promising prototype for quickly building connections between writers across borders, the WrICE model — regularly and judiciously proliferated across the region — could transform the region’s literary and cultural perspectives. — Alvin Pang

Yangshou, China, WrICE China residency 2016, (participants left to right back row) Eliza Vitri Handayani, Fan Dai, Maggie Tiojakin, Francesca Rendle-Short (writer/facilitator), Ara Sarafian, Peter Clynes, David Carlin (writer/facilitator), (front row) Michele lee, Lawrence Lacambra Ypil, Mia Wotherspoon, Alice Pung, image Penny Johnson