Getting our bookshop fix on at Readings at the State Library.
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The Year 9-12 girls joined me for this panel session talking about how to be an advocate and how to write about advocacy. On our panel was three wonderful women; writer Laniyuk, poet Elena Gomez and writer and critic Sonia Nair.
The group explored their individual motivations on writing, how to be an accessibility advocate (or an accomplice) and how to use social media to "do something about it". Our girls were taken with the idea of an "accomplice" and how they might be able to advocate for causes that are important to them. There was talk about the importance of solidarity and that it involves a lot of listening and learning before taking action. In a culture with information and compassion fatigue; how do we cut through all of that to make our voices heard?
Goodbye, World
Our second session required some travel between Treasury Place and the State Library and we were overjoyed to find out that the speaker of this session Lynette Noni had taken out the 2019 Gold Inky Award last night for her book 'Whisper'.
Meeting back up with the rest of the group, this talk was all about Young Adult novels; the writing process, where to find inspiration and how to weave the story. Lynette spoke passionately about the world that she had created in the 'Medoran Chronicles' and how her characters were her best friends. From how to work out character names to techniques in plotting she kept the group engaged for the 45 minutes and we kept on talking about ideas that she generated for the rest of the afternoon.
Next Year?
Even though the Melbourne Writers Festival School's Program runs all day, we found that just the two sessions worked well with our students. Enough to get ideas from but not too much to exhaust us. The debrief in the Learning Commons when we got back to school was enlightening and hopefully a few of them have some ideas about where to take their writing.
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