Sydney Writers Festival English Enrichment Excursion

Last week students from the year 9 and 10 English Enrichment classes and 40 other English enthusiasts attended the Secondary Schools Day at the Sydney Writers Festival at the Seymour Centre in Camperdown, and were privileged to learn about the passions, sources of inspiration and trade secrets of four prize-winning Australian YA authors. The presentations were highly entertaining and often moving, ranging over a vast array of social issues as well as writerly practices, and question time demonstrated how closely some of the authors had touched a nerve. Compered by YA fantasy author Jeremy Lachlan, the day was a treat for us all.

Elizabeth Maddox

Garth Nix

Garth Nix was the first author that we heard from. He talked about his own experience becoming an author as well as the imaginative and wonderful journey he goes through when writing his books. His most recent book, The Left Handed Booksellers of London, is about a girl’s quest to find her father in a magical version of London, where the old and new worlds clash. In his talk he emphasised the importance of finishing your stories and including elements of your own life as well as fantastical elements. Overall, his speech was engaging and was full of tips and tricks to improve my writing.

Marley Seebacher

Zana Fraillon

The second speaker, Zana Fraillon, gave us a truly unique and memorable experience at the Sydney Writers Festival. She guided us through a workshop on creating characters and wrangling them into fantastic tales, and offered her writing insights on the way. We had to write down certain words from various categories in order to get our ideas flowing and she gave us tips on creative writing. Once the workshop was nearly completed we all had magical characters into which we breathed life with the help of Zana Fraillon.

Jehanzeb Qureshi

Gary Lonesborough

Gary Lonesborough was the third author who spoke at the Writer’s Festival. He is the author of the book, The Boy In The Mish. This book is a young adult novel about a gay Aboriginal boy living in a rural town who is struggling to accept himself and explore his identity. Gary draws on his own experiences as a gay Indigenous man and also talked about this with the host of the festival. Personally, he taught me more about how to represent real life experiences and about being a gay or Aboriginal writer.

Chloe O’Keefe

Leanne Hall

One of the guest speakers we listened to was Leanne Hall, who has just released her third book The Gaps. She walked up, and instead of talking about techniques she used to write her stories, or how what books she liked in particular, she told us a different type of story. Hall talked about how she used her experience and past as an Asian growing up in Australia to add character and realism to her book; the experiences she had in her life that lead up to her career in writing and why it was important for us to do the same. Several things Hall said were relatable to many Asian Australians, such as the lack of representation, the desire to be white, and other components that came with a childhood growing up around people who didn’t look or act like you.

Amanda Heng