Close-up of pink and orange paper flowers.

About Ascolta Women Inc.

Note on use of Ascolta images

In support of our creatives, all images used in this website are produced by Ascolta women with their permission.

Chi Siamo ~ Who We Are

A group of women and one man gathered at a book signing or literary event, with books displayed on a table and a blue banner with logos and text in the background.

Ascolta Women, Stories from the Other Side launch, March 2025

Ascolta Women Inc. is a creative collective of multigeneration Italian Australian and affiliated women across Australia, Canada and Britian. Established in 2020, and incorporated in 2023, Ascolta Women give voice and ascolta (listen), to unheard stories from the Italian diaspora.

Ascolta women meet biweekly online to write, discuss and ascoltare (listen) to our mutual and diverse lived experiences. We create a cherished space of support, validation, camaraderie, learning, and joy. Ascolta women explore, reflect, and record stories through creative writing, photography, and visual and performing arts and through academic and community dialogues. Our creative works are published annually to celebrate International Women’s Day and honour migrant women everywhere.

How to get involved

Our Story

Ascolta Women Inc. was established in 2020, developed from the forum, Ascolta! Listening to Unheard Stories: Italian Australian Multi-Generation Women’s Experiences and Migration Legacies which was initiated by Teresa Capetola’s doctoral research on storying lived experiences of post-World War II second generation Italian Australian middle-aged women.

As part of her multi-modal qualitative, Arts Based Research (ABR) (Leavy, 2015) utilising Participatory Action methods (Middleton et al., 2022), Teresa co-created a short work of fiction with women participating in her research. This resulted in the production, and subsequent launch at the Ascolta forum, of the manuscript Il Baule: A Co-created Short Story by Post World War II Second Generation Italian Australian Middle-Aged Women. This consultative and collaborative process was a precursor to the emerging Ascolta Women process of deep listening, emotional holding and acknowledging of women’s lived experiences through their storying.

March 2020

Ascolta Forum

Book Launch of Il Baule, following the Ascolta! Listening to Unheard Stories forum exploring Italian Australian women’s migration legacies.

July 2020

Ascolta Women Established

This was the first zoom meeting and they have continued to meet every 2 weeks since.

2023

Ascolta Women Incorporates

The Creative Writing Process

Creative writing workshop
Facilitated online bi-weekly writing workshops utilise prompts based on the annual theme. Writers are encouraged to explore writing styles and language including Italian, dialect and Italianised English. Writers are invited to share their writing with participants and receive supportive constructive feedback.

Trauma-informed practice
Ascolta Women is a trauma-aware informed space. This means we understand that trauma experiences are a possibility for anyone. Our aim is to create welcoming, safe, and supportive spaces to minimise triggering or re-traumatising events. Therefore, we ask women to pre-empt sharing their writing with a content warning if it contains topics that may potentially affect others, such as - grief, death, suicide, violence, or abuse. We state content warnings about our writing so women can choose to listen or step out for that reading.

Strengths-based approach
We want women to feel empowered and grow in skills and confidence. We encourage women to explore their writing and take risks with writing styles, languages, and topic content. Following on a Strengths Based Approach, we do not preface sharing our work with an apology.

Safe space
Ascolta Women hold a safe space for each other and what is discussed in workshops, stays in the workshops. We respect privacy and confidentiality.

“Like mirrors, facing each other, we come together to create an infinite reflection. small sparks, atoms of light, playing off each other, creating infinite possibilities in our interpretation of writing prompts. The prompts offered by members causes the mind’s ink to flow, becoming words that ripple towards chosen themes, that pool into stories, that with channelling, shaping, and building structures, evolve into published anthologies, that readers can dive into, thus creating further ripples of possibilities in the fluid exchanges between storytellers/writers and listeners/readers.”
Fortunata Callipari 2025