Emerging Writers Mentoring Program - Mentee Announcement
The SCWC are pleased to announce the mentees for both the Spring 2022 round of our Emerging Writers Mentoring Program - General and our Emerging Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders Writers Mentoring Program!
Emerging Writers Mentoring Program - General
Diana Plater is a Foxground, NSW-based playwright, novelist, non-fiction writer and journalist. Her latest book is the novel Whale Rock, which was awarded Gold for Popular Literary Fiction in the Global Ebook Awards 2019. She is the co-author with Ollie Smith of Raging Partners, published by Magabala Books, which was shortlisted for a 2001 NSW Premier’s Literary Award as well as several books and chapters on Indigenous history, including the Cootamundra Girls Home chapter in Many Voices, Reflections on experiences of Indigenous child separation published by the National Library. She has written several other non-fiction books, including Taking Control: How to aim for a successful pregnancy after miscarriage, stillbirth or neo-natal loss, and a play: Havana, Harlem. Diana has had a long career in journalism, writing for media including The Sydney Morning Herald, The Canberra Times, The Age, USA Today and other newspapers, magazines and online outlets. Her story on the Darling River (January 2021) published in Australian Geographic was a finalist for Outstanding Reporting on the Environment, NRMA Kennedy Awards for Excellence in Journalism, 2021. She was Travel Editor and Senior Features Writer at Australian Associated Press for several years. She is presently working on a musical, Cornelius and Rosalind, with Indigenous musician and songwriter Arnold Smith, as well as her second novel, The Cedar-Getter’s Granddaughter.
Deborah Huff-Horwood is an emerging, full-time writer who weaves her life experience and imagination into short stories, novels, picture books and poetry. Much of her work centres on themes of courage, creativity and persistence. Since January 2020, Deborah has achieved thirty awards, short & long-listings for her work across six genres. She is published in eight anthologies: Better Read Than Dead’s 2020 Anthology, the Rhiza Edge anthology The Opposite Of Disappearing, Hawkeye Book’s anthology Reset, Stringybark’s anthology The Mirror, Exile Publishing’s anthology Turning Point, the Share Your Story children’s anthology Once Upon A Whoops!, the South Coast Writers Centre anthology Legacies, and Hawkeye Books’ 2021 Anthology Jump. Forthcoming this year: Family History ACT 2021 Anthology, the Anthology Angels compendium It's A Kind Of Magic, and the AAWP publication ACE: Arresting, Contemporary Stories from Emerging Writers (Anthology 111).
Rose Searby is an historian, researcher and writer who has forever dreamt of writing fiction. She holds a PhD in history from the University of Technology, Sydney in which she wrote about environmental and cultural change in the Snowy Mountains of NSW, specialising in human-animal relations. Her publications include works of non-fiction and history textbooks for secondary level. She lives with her wife in a village that is nestled between a river and the sea on the South Coast of NSW and writes overlooking a forest of eucalypts with her two kelpies and her cat by her side. Liminal is her first work of fiction, first developed as part of the Novel Writing Essentials course at the Australian Writers’ Centre, where she also completed Creative Writing Stage 1. Rose has participated in various writing workshops, including Writing Animals with Laura Jean McKay at Writers Victoria.
Additionally, we have the two emerging editors of Bramble Journal being mentored in this program:
Scout Lee Robinson is a disabled writer and UOW Creative Arts alumni, passionate about dismantling ableism. She advocates for “invisible” disability awareness, and explores these themes within her writing, eager to see far more disability representation on the stage and screen. Scout is also soon to be commencing an MFA in Writing for Performance, and will be splitting her time between Dharawal and Gadigal land.
Spencer Barberis is currently undertaking Honours in Creative Writing at UOW. Primarily a poet, Spencer will be included in Red Room Poetry’s MAD Poetry anthology, set to be published in October. Spencer identifies as neurodivergent, as well as having a chronic mental illness. He splits his time between Gadigal, Wiradjuri, and Dharawal land (COVID permitting).
Emerging Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders Writer Mentoring Program
Nicole Smede is a multi-disciplinary artist of Worimi and European descent living and creating on Wodi Wodi Country. Proud of her heritage, she works with language to reconnect to ancestry and culture. A classically trained Mezzo Soprano, she ran away from classical music early on to pursue wider artistic interests. Now, she uses voice, song, sound and poetry to explore ideas around landscape and connectedness, making sense of her place in the world, reclaiming and reconnecting to ancestry. An established vocalist, she is in the early stages of exploring a writing practice/career in poetry. Since her first poem in 2019, her work has been published through Red Room Poetry, Australian Poetry Journal and Mascara Literary Review. Red Room have supported her work through the Poetry in First Languages program and commissions for PWC and AMEX. In 2020 she was shortlisted for the Red Room Fellowship.
Caroline Oakley is currently enrolled in a Masters In Aboriginal Studies at University of South Australia. She completed an Honours Degree in Contemporary Art and Design at University of South Australia 2021. Her written work highlights Gamilaroi women as matriarchal figure heads, and how they were oppressed and assimilated under white colonial patriarchal violence.
Tabatha (Tab) Cann is a proud Aboriginal saltwater woman, and an equally proud Lesbian. She has worked in the NSW Public Service for over 20 years, primarily with her Aboriginal community, across different services. Tab loves reading non-fiction and has always wanted to share her stories and write a book. She also writes poetry and loves public speaking and walking. Being on country nurtures her soul, and she hopes to walk the Larapinta Trail and many other wonderful trails in Australia and world-wide. Tab was a 2021 SCWC Emerging Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Writers Program mentee.