2022

May - Three presentations: a book review of Writing Life Stories, information on Liana's book Stories From My Life published through Storyworth, and Stats from our Writers' meetings. 

April - Anna Jacobs, an award winning novelist with a world-wide following shared her fascinating experiences as a successful writer. 

March - Presentation by Ian Simon - Adding and Nnotating Maps in a Word Document

February - Presentation by Helen Jones - East Guildford Cemetery. Parish history, government red tape, and family stories are intertwined in the history of this cemetery. Helen's presentation shows us, as writers, another way of turning dry facts into fascinating accounts that readers will enjoy.

2021

December - Presentation by Linda Green - producing your own photobooks.

November - Have you thought of poetry as another form of writing your family history?  Presentation by Jim Brown, bush poet and songwriter.

October - General discussion on ideas for future meetings and 'Ask a stupid question' time. What do members want to learn about or see discussed? 

September - WA Artist and Poet Virginia O'Keeffe shared different ways (including quilts, poetry and picture books) to record our family history.

August - Graham Chapman spoke about using his Research Notes – Is a story always the way to go?   Sandie Watts presented on GSV - Getting it Write notes.

July - Enrolled Pensioner Guard member, John Knowles has written eight books about different branches of his family. He will explain why and how he wrote and published the books that have been distributed to his extended family. All books are electronic and some have been printed. 

Writers Group member, Jane DiGiuseppe will share some general rules on how to integrate scientific names smoothly into our family history writings (as opposed to formal scientific publications).

June - Presentation by Shannon Meyerkort

May - Presentation:  Growing Your Stories.  This session will be lead by Zoe Inman and examples will be given on how suggestions from Writers Group members have improved our stories.

April - Annual General Meeting and Topic: Your Questions

In December 2019 we published our inaugural book of short stories,   "I have often wondered...."

Preparing and publishing was a huge learning curve for our group - learning how to use footnotes, endnotes, setting up chapters, multiple indexes, photos, etc. The end result was an excellent book.

Copies of the book can be ordered from the FHWA Bookshop.

Writers Group Forum - In the forum you can share information and ask questions.

Convenor: Liana Fitzpatrick

Contact: SIGS Contacts - Convenors - Writers Group

FAMILY HISTORY WA Events - Next meeting will be an at FHWA, May Street, Bayswater: Wednesday 1st June 2022 commencing at 10.00am 

If you are attending our meeting please book -  https://www.trybooking.com/BFCIE

Presentation: Don Briggs will be talking about the amazing story of 'John Dearle a Parkhurst Boy' and how he completed his research before the writing and self publication of his book began. He has written nine other publications - mainly about WA History and Family members. His book - 'John Dearle a Parkhurst Boy' will be entered into the annual prize for the Royal WA Historical Society for unpublished books in June.

The writing topic for this month: Honeymoons or Special Celebrations or your own choice and is due 25th May 2022.  Please email story to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it  

Are you writing your family history or don't know where to start?  Join this group of family historians who go beyond names and dates to flesh out the stories behind their ancestors.  The Writers Group was established in September 2018 to facilitate, support, encourage and motivate each other to write our families history.

We meet monthly at 10am on the first Wednesday of the month (except January).

Meetings include presentations and discussions to aid our writing. Between meetings we are encouraged to write a short article on a specific topic or a topic of our own choice. In small groups we postively critique our submitted stories.  Our stories and minutes of meetings are stored in the Writers Shared Drive. We are amassing a huge collection of resources which are available to members. 

We welcome new members who want to get and give encouragement, support and help in writing about their families history.

Committee: Liana Fitzpatrick, Desma Wachtel, Fran Schifferli, Graham Chapman, Heather Simon and Kaye Nind.