2005 School Magazine

English

English

The 2005 Doris Waraker Townsend Memorial Writer in Residence

Twenty students from Years 11 and 12, and members of the Gwen Harwood Society, joined our Writer in Residence, Kim Wilkins, for a series of workshops held at the School over three consecutive days in July. Kim Wilkins holds postgraduate degrees in English Literature and Creative Writing and is a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Queensland. She has published eleven novels, two of which have won literary awards.

The girls who participated in the programme not only benefited from her expertise and insights into thewriting process but also enjoyed the entertaining and interactive sessions. Kim regarded the students with whom she worked during her residency as being some of the very best and brightest that she has ever had the pleasure of teaching, and she encouraged them to pursue their creative writing talents in the future with the enthusiasm and energy that they displayed during the residency.

Kim Wilkins

Pleasure, Passion, Provocation

The Faculty of English provides not only a stimulating, challenging and eclectic curriculum at all levels in the School but also regular opportunities for students to engage in a range of curricular and extracurricular extension and enrichment activities. In the classroom context these include Wide Reading programmes, a diverse range of Electives that enable students to explore focal topics and

creative and theoretical understandings in a course characterised by student autonomy – self-selected texts, self-formulated tasks and self-focused learning – which provides an excellent basis for the transition to their tertiary studies. This year also saw the inauguration of the Gwen Harwood Society, a co-curricular activity designed to nurture and to foster student creative writing endeavours, and named in honour of one of our most prestigious past students.

texts of particular interest to them, and the English Extension (Literature) subject that is both extremely popular and extremely successful, enabling Year 12 students to develop complex

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Brisbane Girls Grammar School

School Magazine 2005