What if the difference between a good piece… and one that quietly holds a room… wasn’t talent at all?
What if it was simply learning to see more?
Join Deirdre Hanna (Dee) for a practical and interactive workshop exploring Integral Writing, a fresh approach that helps writers deepen character, enrich setting and reveal the larger story without losing their own unique voice.
Rather than another set of writing rules, Integral Writing offers four simple lenses that encourage us to notice:
What is happening inside a character
What is happening between people
What can actually be seen and experienced
What larger history, culture and systems quietly shape the story
Together we’ll read an excerpt from Dee’s short story The Sacred Ordinary, discover how these four perspectives naturally appear in good writing, and then put the ideas into practice with enjoyable writing exercises and group discussion.
Whether you write memoir, fiction, travel writing, poetry or family history, you’ll leave with practical editing tools you can apply immediately to your own work.
As Marcel Proust wrote:
“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”
Come along and discover how seeing more deeply can help you write more deeply. Good writers describe what they see. Integral writers learn to see more.
About the Presenter
Deirdre (Dee) Hanna has been writing for more than forty years across an unusually wide range of genres, from academic research and memoir to travel writing, children’s books, young adult fiction, poetry and short stories.
A qualified theologian, transpersonal psychotherapist and chaplain, Dee was awarded a Churchill Fellowship to study the spiritual care of cancer patients in the United Kingdom. Together with her late husband, Rev. Dr Ian Mavor OAM, she co-founded Hopewell Hospice and later Paradise Kids Australia, supporting grieving children, families and people facing end-of-life journeys.
Alongside her professional writing, Dee has always been fascinated by story. She is currently working on a memoir about creating Australia’s first hospice in Queensland, a humorous travel collection titled Fawlty Cruising, children’s picture books, young adult fiction exploring grief and resilience, and a series of short stories celebrating the sacred hidden within ordinary life in her End-of-Life Companion Training..
Her writing is influenced by authors as diverse as Ken Wilber who developed Integral Theory, Bill Bryson, David Sedaris, John Green, Anne Tyler and Richard Rohr, blending observation, humour, psychology and spirituality with a deep appreciation for everyday human experience.
Today’s workshop introduces Integral Writing, an approach Dee has developed from years of writing, reading Wilber’s books, and reflecting on the meaning and purpose of life. It is not another set of rules, but a practical way of helping writers notice more, inviting readers into the inner life of a character, the relationships that shape them, the physical world they inhabit, and the larger story unfolding around them.
Dee believes the best writing doesn’t simply tell us what happened. It helps us see what was there all along.