Gold Coast Anthology – Undertow

Gold Coast Anthology – Undertow is a Prana Writers initiative, supported by the Arts Queensland and Gold Coast City Council. Our vision is to produce a beautiful book full of wonderful stories that touch on some aspect of the Gold Coast. It will be available in paper and as an eBook.  Launch is 10th May 2014.

The aim of the Gold Coast Anthology project is to compile a cross-genre anthology of stories written by Gold Coast writers about the Gold Coast, inspired by photographs in the local collection, Picture Gold Coast. Award-winning fantasy author, Louise Cusack, our original mentor, has agreed to write the Foreword. This project will enrich Gold Coast culture and celebrate the city as a beautiful and inspiring destination, while providing professional development and produce a more diverse and reinforced network for local writers.

The specific outcomes expected are:

• Skills development of Gold Coast writers, professional and emerging, by providing the opportunity to create a story and have it published in an anthology.
• Skills development of contributors to the anthology through the opportunity of working with a professional editor to develop their story to publication standard
• Prana Writers will share their experiences in developing this anthology with the local community through events like Literati and other literary events.
• The development of this anthology for Gold Coast City shows a maturing cultural community within the city, and perhaps goes one step beyond Brisbane’s One Book — Many Brisbanes anthology by using the inspiration of images from Picture Gold Coast.
• The use of images in the final product will help to reinvigorate the Picture Gold Coast collection from a literary perspective, as opposed to an historic or local studies perspective.
• The product launch is planned to coincide with Gold Coast Literati 2014.
• Any profits from book sales will be allocated either to the compilation of a follow up anthology, or other Prana Writers Literary projects (e.g. hosting writers workshops) for the benefit of the writing community.
• Finally, there will be a product of literary value for the city, about the city, released into the international marketplace. The anthology will be an inspiration to locals and tourists.

Key elements of the project:

• Up to ten stories of approximately 4000 words will be developed to a professional standard by professional and emerging writers and editors belonging to Prana Writers (which was kick-started by the GCCC initiative of Write That Book in 2009, and further supported by an RADF Grant in 2010 for Publish that Book. Since then we have self-funded five workshop meetings a year, inviting published authors to share their skills.

• At least ten stories will be selected from a submission period open to all Gold Coast writers, or writers with a Gold Coast connection. These stories will be similarly developed to a high standard.

• All the stories will undergo a vigorous editorial process, with editors Elizabeth Fitzgerald and Helen Stubbs laying the groundwork with the authors to strengthen the works and inspiring further development for the authors.

• The list of Prana authors includes Tom Betts, Penner Choinski, Nicola Tierney, J.S. Choinski, Janis Hanley, David Stringer, Paul Garrety, Rebecca Fraser, and Kay Gibb.

• Any profits will go towards funding further anthologies or activities that support local Gold Coast writers.

• We have approval from GCCC Local Studies Library to use the set of images from Picture Gold Coast on this site as inspiration for the stories.

• The end product will be an anthology of stories inspired by Gold Coast pictures appealing to tourists and locals, and will be marketed through a launch, website, social media and fliers. Our plan is to launch the anthology as part of Gold Coast’s Literati 2014.

• Prana Writers see this as an important next step in further expanding our skills and supporting emerging writers in the Gold Coast community.

The writers within the Prana Writers group have published multiple short stories, novels and articles. As a group we won the state and national open sections of the Write-A-Book-In-A-Day (WABIAD) competition with The Coral Sea Monster in 2011, which was recently published on Smashwords by the Katharine Susanna Prichard Writers Centre.