Growing young writers

Young Writers’ Festival

Last weekend we hosted our annual Young Writers’ Festival!  Our theme for the Festival was ‘Growing Young Writers”.  Our Festival kicked off on Friday night with our Poetry Slam hosted by the indelible Emilie Zooey Baker.  Thank you to Ms Wilson for supporting and preparing our wonderful poets.  Congratulations to our winners Amelie Sibillin, Frankie O’Leary,  and Rose Burrage, all of Year 8, with their poem about gender stereotyping, ‘Girls’.

On the Saturday we were joined by four authors, chosen by Book Club students.  Comic book maker Bernard Caleo delighted us with his comics that tell the story of Darebin.  Jack Heath taught us how to tell a convincing lie! He also gave us some great tips to improve our creative writing and showed us his work in progress and the amount of drafting and editing required – a great insight.  A special thank you for our student hosts Daniel O'Neill (Year 7) and Will Grage-Perry (Year 8) for introducing Bernard and Jack and leading the Q&A. Cath Crowley and Fiona Wood were ‘in conversation’ with three of our NHS students.  Mia Pennefather (Year 7), Ivy Hinkley (Year 8) Elsbeth Pinnuck (Year 9) asked Cath and Fiona thought-provoking questions.  Thank you to all our student volunteers too.  We could not have done it without you!

What’s a festival without delicious food?  Our Literary Café was superb!  Year 9 Food Studies students from #WELOVEFOOD and The Catering Challenge prepared both sweet and savoury dishes, all with a literary twist!  It was all ‘srumpdiliupmptious’ as the BFG would say.  We were satisfyingly feed.  A big thankyou to Ms Lockhart and Ms Delahunty and their students for their thoughtfulness and culinary skill.  Look out for the Literary Festival Recipe Book that is currently in publication. 

It was a successful event that would not have been possible without the wonderful work of our library staff.  Big thank you goes to Jennifer Tripp, Justine Sayers and Kathryn Taylor.