A labour of love by a young group of passionate lovers of literature came to ceremonial fruition on August 11 as Write, the literary magazine was launched at The Lakshman Kadirgamar Institute of International Relations and Strategic Studies, amid a distinguished gathering.
In her opening address the chairperson of the Write magazine committee, Shehara Willie described how she was inspired to venture forth to realize a publication dedicated to promote good writing as a result of attending a creative writing workshop.
Together with her dedicated team the Write magazine’s founder paved the way for submissions to come in even from overseas for the upcoming publication. Over 150 submissions had been received, from which 35 were selected. The selected submissions include one from South Africa and another from India.
The composite therefore makes Write an international publication. The majority of submissions had been poetry, mostly from female writers. The editing and filtering process as was explained by the chairperson was mainly to improve lexical and grammatical facets.
However, very little editing and in some instances none at all, admittedly was done of the selected submissions which speaks much about the quality of the submissions. A remarkable aspect of this publication is that it not only features poetry and short fiction, but also one act plays, as well as letters. Therefore, there is space for the genre of ‘epistolary writing’ also to gain expression between the pages of Write.
This project had been sincerely supported by several stalwarts from the academia of letters whose repute speaks widely. Among them are Prof. Maithree Wickremesinghe, Prof. Rajiva Wijesinha and also Dr. Amirthanjali Sivapalan.
The chairperson of Write magazine’s committee thanked all those who supported them and requested for support to help sustain this worthy venture which of course requires the patronage of advertisers and sponsors.
The keynote address for the evening was delivered by Gratiaen Prize winning poetess and academic Dr. Vivimarie Vanderpooten.
Her speech looked at the changing face of the literary canon which is near religiously upheld as the province of academia, and how the word literary is broadening to encompass even music, sermons and comics. Touching on how the internet and the advent of social media has provided writers a wide platform to get readers, she stressed on how there is also the disservice that can be done to good writing as people may begin to believe that the number of ‘likes’ posted on a social media site may be seen as a yardstick to determine what is ‘good writing’. She thus pointed out that while social media posts can be good for self esteem as a means to share one’s writing, it can also hinder improvement.
Offering her congratulations to the Write magazine’s team, the keynote speaker concluded her speech, which was followed by the formal launch of the Write magazine which is now available at selected bookshops, including Barefoot and Expographics.