Applications are now open for the SCWC’s Emerging Writers Mentoring Program - General Stream.
ABOUT - The SCWC’s Emerging Writers Program aims to recruit talented emerging South Coast writers to work with a writing mentors to deepen their writing skills, develop new work, and publish and present this work to local audiences. Emerging writers in this program will be connected with one of three writing mentors, Emma Darragh, Judi Morison or Hayley Scrivenor from whom they will receive 10 hours of mentoring which would be feedback on up to 30,000 words and would include mentor’s reading and meeting time.
Mentoring may also include referrals to peer writing groups, subsidised access to workshops or connection with events that provide professional industry knowledge.
Up to six places are available
Genre accepted for this program: short stories, fiction and narrative non-fiction
Open for submissions: 14th October - 5th November. Notification, if successful: 15th November
Duration: Mentoring will begin at the end November and will conclude at the end of January. Online meetings to be arranged between mentee and mentor.
Cost: This mentoring program is worth over $1000 at Australian Society of Authors rates. It is offered to SCWC members at the subsided rate of $500. Concession rates are also available on a sliding scale.
Criteria: To accept a position in the program, the mentee must be a SCWC members aged 18+ and must have between 10,000 and 30,000 words ready to submit to the mentor in November.
ABOUT THE MENTORS
Emma Darragh holds a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Wollongong and is an experienced mentor, editor, and creative writing teacher. Her writing has appeared in numerous Australian publications, including Cordite, Westerly, Meniscus, TEXT, and The Big Issue Fiction Edition. Emma’s debut novel-in-stories, Thanks for Having Me, was published by Joan Press in February 2024 and is shortlisted for The Readings New Australian Fiction Prize.
Judi Morison has Gamilaroi and Celtic heritage and is a member of the First Nations Australia Writers Network and the Australian Society of Authors. A Ngana Barangarai (Black Wallaby) Indigenous Literary Project member and former editorial assistant for Dreaming Inside: Voices from Junee Correctional Centre, she has led South Coast Writers Centre’s 2021-2024 Emerging Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Writers Mentoring Programs.
Judi has an MA in Creative Writing, and her short fiction, creative nonfiction and poetry have been published in a range of literary journals. Her historical novel manuscript won a 2020 Queensland Writers Centre’s Publishable mentorship and she was the 2022 holder of the Writing NSW’s Boundless Indigenous Writers Mentorship Award. She won a 2024 Roderick Centre Online Fellowship and 2024 Cultivate Mentorship.
Hayley Scrivenor is the author of Girl Falling and Dirt Town. Girl Falling was published in Australia in August 2024 and described as “a remarkable exercise in complex storytelling written in Scrivenor’s idiosyncratic, metaphorically vivid prose” and a “worthy follow-up to the best-selling Dirt Town.” Dirt Town was published internationally in 2022 (as Dirt Creek in the U.S., where it was a USA TODAY bestseller) and quickly became a #1 Australian bestseller. The novel has been shortlisted for multiple national and international awards and translated into several languages. In 2023, Dirt Town won the ILP John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger, the Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ+ Mystery and the ABIA for General Fiction Book of the Year. Hayley has a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Wollongong and lives on Dharawal country.