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Online writing groups are precious tools for female writers who may face physical, psychological, or geographical barriers that prevent them from participating in in-person writing groups.The online groups provide a supportive and collaborative environment that encourages women writers to connect, share ideas, and improve their writing. This project aims to help overcome many of the obstacles that prevent female writers from fully participating in the literary community.
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Each writing group lasts about two hours and is organised as follows:
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We begin with a short introduction of the writers
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Each writer presents the subject she would like to write about
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The writing phase lasts 1 hour
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Finally, writers read their texts and give feedback to each other
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Mutual help and appreciation are at the centre of our core values, and we hope to create a safe space in which all members will find their place.
Our online writing group takes place every first Monday of the month, between 1pm CET and 3 PM CET. For the sake of inclusivity and accessibility, the writing groups are free of charge for the participants. ​
To participate, please send a short description of you and of your work to the following email address: world@igfem.at
Sunrise Seen Through A Smashed-Up Music Box
I have plucked off the kitchen floor tile by tile—I have whitewashed the paint off the walls—I have made a patchwork duvet out of rejected calls, out of the colourful palette of jackets on turned backs, out of spammed ‘Hello’s and refrigerated pleas for help—I have taken pincers to the weeds that passersby have planted in my garden, and made a bonfire in the middle of my dining room—I have fed it with pamphlets and manuals and booklets and maps and guides, with the unsolicited shovels others have commanded, enforced, forced into my soil, the soil that only I know—the shovels wouldn’t burn so I have bent them into skinny ballerinas—like a jazz-classical medley of Modigliani and Degas—I have rolled up the paintings that used to blurt out blazons of angels—rolled up the carpets I had prostrated under strangers’ shoe soles for years—I have smashed up my rib cage wriggling out of corsets, posture correctors, halos—smashed it like a music box—I have peeled off my own face wrenching away decreed sunglasses—I have seen the sunrise and I must say it was a tangerine sprinkled with sea salt and left to melt like butter at the heart of a yawning volcano—it was a black cat opening its orange-azure eyes—it was a lazy modulation, a fluorescent kite languishing in the arms of the horizon—it was, in short, more than guidelines, stories, research findings—not unlike that kaleidoscopic eruption of a word: ‘me’.
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- Women Writer's Group Poem from Armenia