WrICE:
Writers Immersion and Cultural Exchange

At the heart of WrICE is a simple idea —

To give writers of different backgrounds and levels of experience a chance to step outside their familiar writing practices and contexts and connect deeply with writers from different cultures and across generations through an immersive residency program.

WrICE is a respectful and generative space for reflection, conversation, creative sharing, and surprise: a counter-space.

WrICE was founded by David Carlin and Francesca Rendle-Short at RMIT University’s non/fictionLab in 2014. Since that time, through staging seven residencies to date, WrICE has helped create an informal network of 70 leading and emerging writers across 14 countries, including Ameena Hussein, Suchen Christine Lim, Melissa Lucashenko, Alice Pung, Rina Kikuchi, Alvin Pang, Christos Tsiolkas, Ali Cobby Eckermann, Dicky Senda, Xu Xi and Norman Erikson Pasaribu, to name just a few. WrICE has partnered with Sing Lit Station (Singapore), as well as the Singapore Writers Festival, Melbourne Writers Festival, Queensland Poetry Festival, Ayala Museum (Manila), National Library of Vietnam and others. The WrICE model is based on the idea of creative writing as a way of thinking, being and learning collectively,

The WrICE program (2014-2018) was produced with the support of the Copyright Agency Cultural Fund (Australia). Since 2020 WrICE residencies have been conducted as a partnership between RMIT’s non/fictionLab and Sing Lit Station (Singapore). From 2021-2024, the WrICE program is conducted in parallel with a research project, Connecting Asia-Pacific Literary Cultures: Grounds for Encounter and Exchange, a Discovery Project funded by the Australian Research Council. The project aims to develop, test, evaluate and communicate a new model for best practice in intercultural and transnational exchange based on principles and processes of ethical encounter.