Visit to Write Now Festival

On Monday, the 15th of May, Mrs Wills’ year 10 English Pre-Lit class participated in the Write Now Festival with other schools from Adelaide. The day was a precursor to the Dream Big Festival. This event was designed to improve our writing knowledge and skills by exploring a range of techniques and alternative storytelling approaches. Students were given the opportunity to choose three different workshops from a variety of options. These included skills needed for writing creative pieces, journalistic writing, autobiographical writing, creating comics, and the histories of different story types, such as fairy tales, all taught in fun and engaging lessons by published writers.

In the morning the festival opened with a whole group session where Ellen Grahame and Jamie Hornsby, playwrights of Clair Della and the Moon, talked to us about their careers and how they transitioned from acting to writing plays. In the afternoon panel session, we had the privilege of hearing from multiple other writers, including Vanessa Len, author of Only A Monster, and Alice Boyle, author of Dancing Barefoot, during an engaging Q&A. This was my favourite part of the day as it was incredibly interesting to learn about all the different jobs that can constitute a career in writing, and to hear about the authors’ journeys in becoming writers. This gave us an understanding of how new writers can work towards making writing a career. Thanks to Mrs Wills and Mrs Thurston for organising the day and accompanying us on this worthwhile excursion!

Overall, this was a fun and valuable experience enjoyed by all of us!

Zali Twomey
Year 10