Our Story

WSRC Staff 2023 outside the Female Orphan School, WSU.  From left to right: Ben Etherington, Milissa Deitz, James Jiang, Huyen Hac Helen Tran, George Haddad, Melinda Jewell, Felicity Castagna, Tegan Bennett Daylight, James Gourley, Quah Ee Ling, John Encarnacao, Kate Fagan, Suzanne Gapps, Anne Jamison, Anthony Uhlmann, Helen Koukoutsis, Alex Ling, Lorraine Sim, Luke Carmen, Sienna Brown.

Credit: Sally Tsoutas, Western Sydney University

The Writing and Society Research Centre (WSRC) is dedicated to examining the social and cultural power of literature, writing and storytelling. We are one of Australia’s leading tertiary centres for Literary Studies and Creative Writing, based at the Parramatta South campus of Western Sydney University (WSU) in the School of Humanities and Communication Arts. As a research hub, we are unique in housing two major cultural institutions in Australian literary publishing: the Sydney Review of Books and the highly-decorated independent press Giramondo Publishing.

We also run a series of cutting-edge postgraduate and doctoral research programs, with supervision available from leading Australian authors and researchers in literature and creative writing. Authors working in the Centre include eminent Waanyi author Alexis Wright, Felicity Castagna, George Haddad, Tegan Bennett Daylight, Luke Carman, Kate Fagan and Mette Jakobsen. Our staff combine scholarship, authorship and expertise in publishing to demonstrate the power of writing in examining social and cultural values.

The Sydney Review of Books and Giramondo are fundamental to the Centre’s thriving regional engagement activities, and support our strong commitment to First Nations critics, writers and scholars. Both publishing entities also provide industry experience and vocational pathways for our distinguished postgraduate students and alumni, and for a number of undergraduate interns.

WSRC staff are passionate about the importance of literature to social wellbeing in a globalised world. The Centre excels in creative, practice-based research that speaks with and to the most culturally and linguistically diverse regions in Australia. Since its foundation in 2006, the Writing and Society Research Centre has played a crucial role in establishing and sustaining a dynamic writing culture in our region and in contributing to Western Sydney’s vibrant arts, culture and knowledge economies.