Join award-winning poet, human rights lawyer, and refugee campaigner Sara M Saleh for a very special poetry masterclass in association with Adelaide Writers Week.

In this generative writing workshop, we will interrogate our relationship with place, the places we think we know, and the places that have located and dislocated us. We will find the writing prompt in poems exploring the theme of place, and we will be guided by tools for intentional reading as a way to build portals into a poem when we can’t find a door.

We will explore the way language in its various shapes and forms presents itself in our writing so that we may better understand it, to bend, break, and play with its rules. Together we will workshop ideas and techniques for new poems. This is suitable for everyone who wants to push their craft in surprising twists and turns.

This special masterclass, presented in association with Adelaide Writers Week, provides rare insight and practical writing guidance with an unparalleled Australian author.

In this Masterclass, participants will cover how to:

• Hone your writing practice
• Defeat ‘writer’s block’ through tips and prompts
• Find inspiration in unexpected places
• Step out of your poetic form comfort zone
• Workshop a poem with feedback

Praise for Sara M Saleh:

‘These poems vibrate with aliveness, with history, with the legacy of interrupted (and reclaimed) narratives’ - Hala Alyan

‘A collection you will feel in your throat. The Flirtation of Girls announces Sara Saleh’s exquisite and defiant voice. She is a poet who knows herself and her world, stares oppression in its many faces, and envisages worlds both despite and without it. Her poems make the violent ordinary extraordinary – and bring the things that loom large and unspeakable into the same palm of your hand that holds the book.’ - Alison Whittaker

Members $88 / Non-members $140
Venue: State Library of South Australia

—Not a Writers SA member? Members receive more than 30% off the full price of this workshop, you’ll also get a free 20 minute consult, expert advice about your career and your work, and join a community of like-minded creatives. Join now for as little as $60! 

—Writers SA members must be logged in to receive the member discount. If you would like to use a paid workshop credit or gift voucher to book in, please contact [email protected] at least five working days before the workshop commencement date. Our staff don’t work full time and we don’t want you to miss out! Program credits from First Draft, Poetry Studio and Manuscript Incubator cannot be used on Writers Studio masterclasses.

—If you are a member of another state based writers centre, SCBWI SA or Editors SA, please contact [email protected] at least five working days before the program commencement date to get a code for the member price.

—Writers SA provides complimentary membership for First Nations writers and for writers experiencing economic hardship. Please contact [email protected] to redeem.

About Sara M Saleh

Sara M Saleh is a writer/poet, human rights lawyer, and the daughter of Palestinian, Lebanese and Egyptian migrants. Her poems, essays and short stories have been published widely and she is co-editor of the ground-breaking 2019 anthology Arab, Australian, Other: Stories on Race and Identity. Her first novel Songs for the Dead and the Living (Affirm Press) and first full-length poetry collection The Flirtation of Girls/Ghazal el-Banat (UQP) were both released late 2023.

Sara is the first and only poet to win both the 2021 Peter Porter Poetry Prize and the 2020 Judith Wright Poetry Prize. She is the recipient of the inaugural Affirm fellowship for Sweatshop writers, a Neilma Sidney travel grant, Varuna writers residency, and Amant writers residency in New York, amongst other shortlistings and honours.

Sara is based on Bidjigal land with her partner and their four cats.

Photograph by Stefanie Zingsheim.