Q: Can you tell us a bit about your background?
A: My name is Alice Mai, and I am a writer and writing workshop facilitator based in Port Macquarie. I founded the Blue Feather Writing Circle in 2024, and I have been working on my novel since 2019. Writing has been a constant companion throughout my life- not just as a creative practice, but as a way of listening, surviving, and making meaning.
I grew up in a small village in southern China. As a child, I spent my days roaming the village freely while my parents worked long hours to support our family. There were no books at home, no daycare, and very few resources. When I reached school age, my mother walked me to the primary school in a neighbouring village. We passed through a bamboo forest. After the first day, I walked to school alone every day. It was there that I first learned to read and write, and I fell completely in love.
Once I discovered words, writing became an imaginative game, a way to create worlds where anything could happen. When we later moved to town, the first local library opened while I was in Year Five. I still remember finding a book about dreams, how we dream at night and how to keep a dream journal. That book changed everything. I began placing a notebook beside my pillow and writing down my dreams as soon as I woke. This practice has stayed with me for decades and remains at the heart of my writing life today.
Writing has always been present for me, but it became essential during the 2019 bushfires. My family and I were homeless for two months, moving between motels after staying in a showground hall for a few nights. During that time, journaling became a nightly ritual, a way to hold myself together. Once we finally resettled, I felt a deep urgency to write. I began waking at four in the morning to work on a story, and I became deeply moved by the sunrise over the hills where we lived. Writing about the sunrise soon became part of my daily practice.
In the years since, my writing has increasingly become a conversation with the natural world. I began writing love letters to places I felt connected to, the ocean at my favourite beach, trees I would sit with for hours, and the mountains at Dorrigo. I would write a letter to them and then write a reply on their behalf. Through this practice, I found a way to listen to grief, to beauty, and to the quiet resilience of nature.
Much of my work has emerged from moments of despair, displacement, and heartbreak, but also from wonder and reverence. Writing, for me, is both a refuge and a bridge, a way to stay in relationship with myself, with memory, and with the living world around me.
Q: Can you tell us about the work you presented and the story or concept behind it?
A: The work I presented grew out of my writing practice and the moment I realised I wanted to share it with others. On 21 May 2024, the idea of running writing workshops came to me very suddenly. I was in the kitchen, chopping vegetables, when I felt a clear sense that I could hold a space- a space where I could share my love of writing and speak about life, art, and inspiration in ways that don’t often fit into everyday conversation.
The concept was simple and intentional: to guide people back to the basics. Paper, pen, curiosity, imagination. To create an environment where we write not only with the mind, but with the whole body. Through gentle, accessible exercises, participants are invited to listen inwardly, allowing language to arise from sensation, memory, emotion, and presence. When writing comes from the whole body, it carries a different kind of strength. Sharing this work within a group becomes a reciprocal experience- people are not only heard, but inspired by one another.
That same night, I had a vivid dream. In the dream, I was walking through the bush when I suddenly saw two large blue feathers, each about a metre long, lying beneath the trees. I felt an overwhelming sense of joy and surprise as I picked them up. Holding them, I remember thinking that I had received something profoundly important- something I had been searching for my whole life, without ever imagining it could be so expansive. I wrote the dream down the next morning.
Soon after, I shared both the dream and the idea of the writing circles with my counsellor during a visit to her native bee farm. When I finished speaking, a lyrebird began to sing. She told me that in over ten years of living on the property, she had never heard the lyrebird sing in the afternoon- only in the mornings. We both felt that it carried a sense of affirmation. For the first time in my life, instead of seeking advice from many different people, I felt ready to listen to the lyrebird and begin.
This marked the beginning of my journey facilitating writing workshops. In 2025, I ran around ten workshops across the region. My first was on the Central Coast, titled Love Letters to Brisbane Water. This was followed by Love Letters to the Ocean workshops in Port Macquarie. In April 2025, I facilitated a Love Letters to Nature workshop at Roto House, where participants wrote sixteen letters. These letters were then shared with local visual artists, who created artworks in response. The resulting works were exhibited in June.
Following this, I received support from Arts Mid North Coast to deliver four Love Letters to Nature workshops across the region, alongside independent workshops such as Wild and Sacred Writing. I have also collaborated with yoga teachers to offer retreat-based writing experiences.
Most recently, I received a local council community grant to deliver a Writing for Wellbeing program. This includes eight workshops in total- four held at the library with a focus on community wellbeing, and four at Roto House designed specifically for artists. Across all of this work, the underlying concept remains the same: writing as a practice of wellbeing, connection, and embodied listening.
My facilitation is informed by the work of John Seed and deep ecology, as well as Joanna Macy’s Work That Reconnects. These frameworks support writing as a relational practice- one that reconnects people to themselves, to each other, and to the more-than-human world.
Q: What materials, tools, or processes do you typically work with, and what draws you to them?
A: In my writing workshops, I primarily work with very simple materials: paper and pen. I am drawn to simplicity because it allows people to slow down, relax, and return to their bodies. When distractions are removed, participants often discover that the body itself is like a universe- holding emotions, memories, and stories that are waiting to be noticed and expressed.
Writing, in this context, becomes an embodied process rather than a purely intellectual one. I guide participants to write not only from thought, but from sensation, breath, and felt experience. This approach invites curiosity and imagination, and helps people reconnect with an intuitive way of creating that often gets lost over time.
In some workshops, I also use a Nature Mandala as part of the process. I collect natural objects- leaves, stones, seed pods, shells, and other found items- and arrange them on a cloth in the centre of the space. These objects become prompts for reflection and writing. Participants are invited to respond to what draws their attention, allowing the natural world to speak into their work.
Alongside the materials themselves, the shared space is an essential part of my process. Sitting together, holding space for one another, and listening to each other’s words creates a sense of connection and mutual inspiration. The simplicity of paper, pen, natural objects, and presence allows writing to emerge organically- supported by the body, the group, and the moment.
Q: How did it feel to participate in this exhibition/event/program?
A: Participating in this program and being given the opportunity to run eight writing workshops in our region through the Port Macquarie–Hastings Council grant means a great deal to me. I feel a deep sense of peace and quiet anticipation, as it allows me to bring together years of lived experience and offer it back to the community in a meaningful way.
Writing has guided me through some of the most difficult periods of my life, particularly in the years following the 2019 bushfires. Since 2020, writing has become a steady and essential practice for me. Over time, it has given me strength and the capacity to sit with uncertainty, to look at things I once felt afraid to face, and to care for my own wellbeing with greater honesty and compassion. While each workshop has its own theme, underneath them all is the same intention: writing as a gentle, reliable guide.
What continues to move me is that this work is not about how well we write. In every workshop I have facilitated, each person’s shared words have touched the group in some way. There is something quietly powerful in that experience. When people write from their lived experience and share in a held space, connection naturally arises.
Being part of this program feels like a continuation rather than a beginning- a deepening of a practice that has already shaped me. I look forward to offering these workshops, exploring their possibilities, and continuing to collaborate with artists across different forms, allowing new work to emerge from the voices and stories of the community.
Q: What does participating in this exhibition/event/program mean to you professionally?
A: Participating in this project represents a deepening and maturation of my practice rather than a departure from it. It affirms the work I have been quietly cultivating over several years- writing as an embodied, relational practice that nurtures wellbeing, creativity, and connection.
This opportunity allows me to integrate my roles as writer and facilitator in a more coherent and sustained way. Delivering a series of community writing workshops provides space to refine my approach, respond to participants, and continue developing a framework grounded in lived experience rather than theory alone. It also allows me to translate my personal writing practice into a professional offering that serves the wider community.
The project strengthens my confidence in holding space for others and underscores the value of slow, attentive, process-driven creative work. It situates my practice within a broader arts and community context and opens pathways for ongoing collaboration with artists, cultural organisations, and public spaces.
Q: How do you hope audiences will respond to your work?
A: I hope that audiences respond to my work with a sense of being met and gently accompanied. Rather than aiming for a particular outcome, I hope participants feel permission to slow down, to listen inwardly, and to reconnect with their own voice in a way that feels safe and unforced.
I hope the experience reminds people that writing does not have to be polished or performative to be meaningful. That it can be a quiet, honest practice that supports wellbeing, self-understanding, and presence. If participants leave with a little more trust in their own words, or a renewed curiosity about what lives within them, that feels significant to me.
I also hope the shared aspect of the work fosters connection. When people hear each other’s writing, it often softens boundaries and creates a sense of shared humanity. If audiences feel less alone in their experiences and are more open to listening to themselves, to others, and to the world around them, then the work has done what it needs to do.
Ultimately, I hope the impact is subtle but lasting- a gentle shift in how people relate to writing, to creativity, and to their own inner lives.
Q: What’s next for you in your creative journey?
A: At the moment, my attention is on the eight writing workshops beginning in February. I want to be fully present with this work and allow it to unfold at its own pace. The series offers an opportunity to deepen the practice, listen closely to participants, and continue refining how writing can support wellbeing and connection in different settings.
Alongside this, I will keep writing as a personal and creative practice- something that continues to guide and inform everything I facilitate. I see this period as one of consolidation rather than expansion, allowing the workshops to shape what comes next organically.
From there, I remain open to where the work leads. I am interested in continuing collaborations between writers and artists, and in developing writing spaces that are accessible, grounded, and responsive to the needs of the community. For now, the focus is on showing up, holding space well, and letting the next steps emerge through the work itself.
Q: Where can people find out more about you and your work?
I am still working on my website, Facebook page and Instagram.