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Writers@MQ

Welcome to the official Writers@MQ website! We'll use this site as a promotional way for our members to share their creations online for others to view. Click any of our links to see our other social medias, as well as works out writers have created.

Upcoming Weekly Events

Write-ins: TBC

Upcoming Unique Events

Listed below are our upcoming events for the semester. Please refer to our Instagram, Discord, or Mailing List for more information.

Learn more about our past unique events here!

Watch this space!

About us

Writers@MQ is one of the Macquarie Univerisity societies that has been around since 2014. We're passionate about writing, and our aim is to hype up and support our members in creating their piece of passion, whether that be a short story, poetry, a journal article or a screenplay. Whatever you're into writing about, we're into reading about!

Writers@MQ is a social society dedicated to supporting writers in achieving their dream writing goals. Writers@MQ is a support network of friendly faces who all love to write and talk about writing.We support our members by holding events focused on writing, and unique events meant for building lasting connections with fellow members. Our most popular events are the Meet and Greets held at the beginning of each session, the Prose and Poetry Night, and our weekly write-ins.
Learn more about events here

Write-ins

Join us for a long writing session! Lasting around 3 hours, our write-ins are one of our most attended events. Feel free to stay for the duration of the time, or pop in when you can for a secluded, chill area (usually a classrooom) to get some of your writing work done.

We usually play some chill lofi-beats to get you in the mood for writing, and the environment of everyone working on their own pieces is a great motivator tool for your own projects!

Our write-ins can be beneficial especially if you would like to ask questions about how a certain scene is going, or you want to crack down on some dialogue that sounds real.

For SEMESTER 1: TUESDAYS 11:30-2
For SEMESTER 2: TBC

Unique Events

During the year, both in the study session and in the break periods, we host unique events. These events can be anything, such as reading aloud the projects you've been working hard on, club bonding days over karaoke, collaborative watch-parties with other socieites or end of year celebrations at the beach! You name it, we can (try to) do it!

Here's some examples of unique events we hosted in 2024:

Prose and Poetry Night

Formally known as Poetry Night or Open Mic Night

Twice a semester, we host some sort of performance night where members can read a piece they've been working on aloud to an audience. These events are super fun, especially if you've been vibrating with exictement over the last short story you wrote, or you're itching to get a reaction from people because of the last slam poem you worked on. Or, maybe you just love to listen to what your peers are working on. All are welcome!! Invite your friends or even your family!

Taking place in either a lecture hall or tutorial room, a night of fun comes alive as all of us are engaged in one of the best things to have in common: writing.

We can't wait to hear all the amazing pieces you've written! A new chapter of your novel? Or a haiku you wrote while on a walk? What about the short and sweet memoir you've been cooking up?

Writing Workshops

Want to learn about writing your story in different ways? How about mastering certain parts of it, like dialogue, plot, world-building so you know your story through-and-through? Taking the form of lecture style workshops and discussions, the exec team teach you about writing from their experience and expertise*, as well as scholarly sources.

*Although executives have education experience, they are not trained to teach writing as a subject. These workshops serve as a collaboraitve form of pedgagogy that can help you in your writing.

In 2024, we had a plot workshop, pacing, dialogue, and character knowledge. Mixing discussions, lectures, activities, and collaborative work, our workshops are designed for you to think about your current projects and how to better them.

If you'd like to take a look at the previous presentations we've worked on for these workshops for your own reference, refer to them here:Plot Pacing Dialogue Characters

Watch Parties

Occasionally, we collab with another society to watch something (movie or YouTube series) to spark some inspiration for our own works!!

In the past, we have watched The Mandela Catalogue, The Walten Files, and Gemini Home Entertainment.

Have a recommendation for a watch party? Let us know!

Inspiration Station!

Every week on Mondays, we send out a weekly prompt to try and kindle some motivation in you. Something small to inspire you to write, or an idea for you to start a whole new story!

2024 Semester 1 Weekly Prompts

01. Write about something to do with love.
02. Write about the start of something, the beginning.
03. Write something referencing / about your favorite game.
04. Shuffle your playlist four times, and write about the song that plays.
05. Write what you would have written 10 years ago.
06. Write something set in another universe.
07. Write something funny.
08. Write a poem.

09. Write an Ekphrasis poem.
10. Write something about rain / write something while listening to rain sounds.
11. Write about a mother.
12. Write about a meeting.
13. Write about the end of something.

Keep up to date with our weekly prompts by following either our Instagram or Discord, where they are uploaded weekly during semester!Need more? Here are some prompts from 2023 to keep you going!

2023 Weekly Prompts

01. Write about someone experiencing something for the first time.
02. Write something that features the march hare.
03. Write about a situation involving a problem which requires an unconventional solution.
04. Write a scene featuring the rain.
05. Write something about fear.
06. Write something about a swing (verb or noun)
07. Write something involving an Easter Egg

08. Take inspiration from music.
09. Create a MoodBoard for your WIP
10. Write about the sea.
11. Write about family.
12. Write about betrayal.
13. Write about not being able to see something correctly.
14. Press all the wrong buttons, write about a pet peeve.
15. Write about the Bermuda Triangle.

16. Write about a childhood game.
17. Use time-skips in your writing.
18. Make a nemesis take the spotlight.
19. Write using the nuanced language of flowers.
20. Have your characters react to something bogus.
21. Write about a revealed winning card.
22. Make use of a secret passage! Where does it lead?
23. Write in a creative medium you aren't familiar with.

24. Tell a white lie.
25. Design a frontispiece for your project.
26. Create a blackout poem.
27. Have something float in your writing.
28. Write about a father.
29. Write about a character in another timeline or reality.
30. Write about an alternate, non-verbal form of speech.
31. Write about the first meeting between two people.
32. Include a palindrome in your writing.
33. Feature a greater authority in your writing.

34. Write an original recipie.
35. Utilize either a red or green herring in your story.
36. Write something scary!
37. Write something in 15 minutes.

Bingo

During the Winter break of 2024, Writers@MQ held a bingo competition! Fill in a certain amount of cells to win! Unfortunately, there are no current bingo competitions happening, but you can use the bingo cells as inspiration for your writing, or as a motivator to work on something new.

Check out our members' works!

We're all about supporting here at Writers@MQ. What better way to do it then feature some of our member's works on our website?
Want a feature yourself? Send it to our email and we can have it up for you!

Anthology

Fiction

'Layla and Erion' blurb by Munty C.

An insomniac city tosses and turns at night, asphyxiated by the harsh urban glow. Its greatest desire? To feel the long-lost magic of starlight once again.
In this city resides eleven-year-old Layla, her days only fleeting whispers to the currents of time; her soul numb from the ennui overtaking her youth. Her apathy is challenged, however, when her whimsically wise grandpa Erion asks her a magical question.
"Layla, have you heard of the stars?"
What was once a midnight canvas speckled with sparkling diamonds had now turned to a burnt, dull, smoky-orange plane. Questioning the lifeless night sky, Layla begins to discover the forgotten magic of the stars, as her grandpa shares the wonderful stories of the constellations. Her newfound excitement reignites the smothered spark of childhood wonder, as she dives into the epic tales of history and mythology.
However, tragedy strikes, and Erion’s sudden illness threatens Layla and her grandpa's blossoming friendship. The promise they made to one day see the stars together now slips away, with Layla finding herself pondering the true meaning of life.
“Why do you remember the stars?”
“Will you promise me something?”
“Will I have to let you go?”
“Remember Layla. Only in the midst of darkness, can stars shine the brightest.”
Join Layla and Erion on a heartwarming odyssey, as they discover the wonders of history and nature, navigate the challenges of fate, and realise the personal significance of the stars.Out soon!

'English Lessons' Short Story by Sage C.

Inconspicuous, you stand at the front of the room with a glint in your eyes as you scan your new surroundings. Your gaze settles on me, me, of every much nicer-looking person in the room.
You say your name. Your lips curl into a smile.
The class is by no means full, but you sit next to me anyway. You tell me that you’re ashamed, that you need practice. In a class full of native speakers, I’m chosen for English lessons.
Naivety. It wasn’t the first word we learned, but it certainly felt like it.
No, we start with restaurant etiquette, and how to order food; the difference between an entree and an appetizer. We move to banter and casual conversation soon enough, and you say you want to learn about the dating culture in Australia. I wouldn’t know, I tell you. You ask me if I’d like to.
It’s quick, fast. Soon, our lessons are words mutually intelligible across languages. Sounds that never stray far from our mother tongues. Tongued to each other, your skin against mine; lesson review is suddenly our favorite thing to do.
You learn the parts of my body, my soul, bared in between finite verbs, tense structure, and vowels with diacritics. You learn to pronounce naivety with a green and gold tongue.
When the end of the semester comes, ache becomes a second friend. You’re leaving soon, and distance is hard, and I’ve never had to deal with this before. Infatuation, I say, the rich sounds taking all the space in my mouth, just like the feeling fills my heart.
What's your number? I ask at the airport, people busy behind me while you throw away your Australian SIM card. You look at me with discretion.
My number?
So we can talk? I’m going to be honest, I don’t know how to work with the space between us, but I’ll try for you.
Overhead, they call your flight. It’s comical. Naivety.
You smile, turn to walk away. Over your shoulder, thanks for the English lessons.

Poetry

'Hiding myself because it's easier than telling the truth' Poem by Sage C.

I don’t look like what I am.
It’s a fact I’ve avoided too much.
My skin is white and my eyes are blue: what more could you ask for?
But I can’t really relate because it’s not the same,
And acting like it is is stupid.It’s the same across countries, I say—
We’re all the same, really, I’m just a little—My house smells like fish sauce and
I’m well versed in people hating what I bring to eat for lunch.
Shoes off when you’re in the house; my Auntie isn’t by blood.
People keep asking if I can tolerate the heat
But chili is the most common ingredient in everything I make.I slap the rice bags when I walk past them in the store—
The protective plastic wrap is still on all the electronics in my house—I talk and my accent is laughed at, but in my other,
It’s just the same: I don’t sound right (I don’t look right).
Pictures around my home tell another story; when I was younger,
Much darker and not a care for what other people thought.
My features don’t line up— it never used to matter.I look like myself—
Why isn’t that enough?

Nonfiction

Essay by Sage C.

I’ve always loved to cook. Mixing together dishes with offhand ingredients and expensive oils my parents bought for something special. I tried to learn from them, but they always offered the same foods; western and boring. I taught myself how to cook using cookbooks and a careful eye on YouTube videos and television shows. My father watches MasterChef to judge plating, boasting about how he could do it better, whereas I am noting the kitchen pantry, calculating how many dishes can be made with the same few ingredients. While holidaying in Asia, I over-analyze the menu to see how each meal is curated, the care and elements that go into each and every one. Back home, I recreate.Cooking has been a part of me since I was a teenager. A way to calm down, self-soothe, and show appreciation and love. From cutting and pre-packaging fruits for my friends to having dinner prepared and plated for my mother when she comes home from work. Beef cooked the way she likes it, even though I don't eat it and prawns peeled and blanched with not a sliver of shell left. In high school, I’d spend the night before class sweating in front of a stovetop for lunches; my friends crowding around the blue Tupperware container on wooden school benches as if it were the most interesting part of their day. I’d write the recipe on the back pages of my math workbook and distribute them as if they were gospel. Nothing would make me smile more than my friends telling me they’d cooked my recipe for their family, and they loved it.I’d experiment with different proteins and spices, challenge myself to make something explicitly vegetarian, or hero an element and feature it many times in different ways. Kanom Beung, with its egg white base and sugar-cured yolk center; seaweed soup with a side of seaweed and sashimi style tuna. What I love about cooking is you can mix and match styles; you don’t have to stay to the same palette or cuisine when cooking something. As long as the flavors work, you can make something amazing; a fusion. Thick-cut butcher sausages with Szechuan chili oil, mashed potatoes with oyster sauce and ssamjang, a dipping sauce of doenjang, fish sauce, soy sauce, and Lao Gan Ma for steamed vegetables and raw corn.I don’t measure when I cook. A ‘spoonful’ is always a varied squirt, a ‘cup’ until the pot stops boiling. There’s enough water in the rice cooker when it touches the top of my first knuckle; enough in the pot when it covers the back of my hand. Taste as you go, stop when it tastes “like mom’s”.Most of the food I make is inspired by East Asia. Now, we finally have an Asian grocery store in my small town, but it never used to be so easy. I’d take the hour-and-a-half train home from the city with plastic bags filled with pak choy and choy sum, jars of mapo paste and pickled garlic, containers bursting with Auntie-made, freshly fermented kimchi. I’d pay extra for the perfect cut of thin sliced fatty beef for Korean jjigaes. A spoonful of gochujang, doenjang, sesame oil, and fish sauce; shake gochugaru and garlic powder until it’s the same color as my shirt and it smells like the restaurant on George Street. Sliced green onions, garlic, soft tofu, and a perfectly seasoned soy-marinated egg. Banchan of garlic zucchini, kimchi, and fermented daikon. Every trip would leave my arms sore, but my mind buzzing with new things to try, and new ways of implementing coconut milk into the Korean soups I’ve been making.A few years ago, when deciding what I should do with my career, a neighbor told me not to be a chef, no matter how much I enjoyed cooking and how good I was at it.“Don’t mix your passions with something you need to do to live,” he had said. “You’ll grow to hate it.”I hadn’t dreamed of being a chef, not until he said something about it. It always was a hobby, something I could always rely on. It grew into something I did with my mother, a way we could talk and laugh together in our small kitchen after work. She’d fry up strips of pork with her chopsticks while complaining about the new hire in the front office and I’d thinly slice raw garlic and prepare ssamjang while joining in about how my manager locks the front door of my store. We’d eat together with smiles, warmth in our mouths and hearts, holding a piece of freshly washed lettuce to our mouths and bringing dripping red pork to the leaf as if wrapping it in a blanket.This became a daily routine, whether we were cooking heavily salted minestrone soup or kimchi jjigae, we’d stand side by side cooking. Well, I’d be cooking, she’d either be washing some fresh enoki mushrooms or trying not to cry while cutting up yellow onions. At some point, my cooking skills (and love for it) surpassed hers. When we moved out of my childhood home, the one wish she had for the new forever home was for it to have a big, moveable kitchen. We haven’t gotten that just yet, we renovated our home in 2017 and now have a much nicer kitchen, even though it’s still small. We can work in it, we learned to move around each other, coexist in the small space. We don’t run into each other or bother the other while we cook together.For dinner; a style of tonkotsu soup; creamy orange sauce dotted with flavorful pockets of oil, a heaping of soft chewy noodles, garnished with the greens of spring onions and homemade chili paste. Its taste is reminiscent of miso, and the chicken is succulent and moist inside and crunchy on the outside. Cutting it in two with your knife is like hearing a symphony.Cooking is an all-day activity. My mother thinks of it as a chore, but it’s my life. It’s something I look forward to doing when I come home from work or university classes. It’s always been there for me. Sauteed zucchini and carrot and onion. Garlic, miso paste, tamarind and peanuts, served with warm rice that is washed and soaked before it’s cooked. Basil and chili, stir-fried intensely with oyster sauce and sugar, delicately intertwined with rice noodles and chunks of green onion and lemongrass. Coconut milk; chilis grinded down to a paste; ginger; and lime leaves simmered through the day to create a rich broth by suppertime. Squid battered in panko and furikake; salmon cooked only slightly by a blow torch, topping warm rice with a dot of mayonnaise beneath and a spoonful of roe on top; steaming takoyaki swimming in dipping sauce.A blend of soy and vinegar, garlic and dashi, wasabi; flavors of my youth, flavors of my future. When I cook, my eyes water, and it’s not because I’m chopping onions, it’s because there is so much in cooking. It’s caring for my sick mother who can’t leave her bed. It’s making sure my friends eat at least once during the day. It’s a gesture of my affection to a girl who is gluten, peanut, and dairy free. It’s introducing my partner to the flavors of my family; my father to the flavors of his.It’s the memories of my childhood; the prospect of the future. It’s the dedication of remembering the recipes I’ve created to teach my own children one day, for them to teach theirs. Cooking is everything.

How to get in contact with us

Instagram user: @WritersMQEmail Address: [email protected]Discord Server: Ping either the President, Secretary, or Treasurer, or private message the President

If you wish to feature your work on the website, please tell us your name, what your piece is and have your submission either linked (via google doc) or pasted into the email box.