Group history

Helsinki Writers Group in its original form, was a mouthful (“English Language Writers' Group: An Official Group of Helsinki University”) and met between roughly 2008-2011. I (Kevin) joined during the winter of 2011 when another University of Helsinki student and I badgered one of the original members into reviving the group. For the first ten years of its existence, the group was a HYY organization, but, eventually, dynamics changed, members aged, graduated, moved abroad, and/or had families of their own and in 2019 we realized we didn’t have the university student member numbers to justify remaining a student union organization. Over the years we’ve met at Metätalo, HYY meeting rooms, over the summer months in various cafes and restaurants, (and remotely during COVID), but at some point in 2019 we migrated to Helsinki central library, Oodi. Pretty much every Friday evening for the past decade, we have met. Over the years we’ve had members come and go and the locations or our meetings have changed, but one thing has remained constant: what we do week in and week out.

We are a community of English language writers and poets: published, non published, beginners, intermediate writers and experienced, native English speakers, English as a second/third language speakers, Finnish and expat, from more hometowns/countries/genres/mediums than I will attempt to name, and we meet to share our work and get valuable feedback from other writers, whether it is poetry, short fiction, long-form fiction, creative nonfiction (and very occasionally drama and song lyrics), we remain a collective of writers and poets, serious about developing our craft.