JUST WRITE School Holiday Program

The South Coast Writers Centre presents 'Just Write', a two-week program of writing workshops, hands-on creative activities and competitions for Shoalhaven teens (ages 12-18) these summer school holidays. 

Don't miss your opportunity to be inspired by these award-winning authors and talented writers and creatives at Ulladulla, Nowra and Sanctuary Point Libraries, Shoalhaven Regional Gallery and online. 

All the events are free, but registrations are required.

BYO: pen & paper, lunch, snacks and drinks to all workshops.

Zine Art Collage with Angie Cass

5 January 11am-2pm at Shoalhaven Gallery
6 January 11am-2pm at Ulladulla Library

In this workshop participants will use vintage and modern paper cut-outs to design an eye-popping collaged zine cover. They will learn cutting techniques and composition skills, and how to use elements that reflect their own style. In three hours participants will explore how to craft an amazing character, a landscape, and a stand-out title for their zine. Come along and have fun with friends or meet new people who love stories, art and graphics.

Angie Cass is an analogue and digital collage artist who is interested in discovering hidden treasures in the everyday. Her passion is facilitating workshops where participants can start their own collage collection and build their own meaningful practice.

How to Write a Book Review with Sandy Fussell

10 January 11am-12pm ONLINE
(Open to all South Coast, not just Shoalhaven)

Share your favourite books with the world. Learn how to write a book review: what to put in, what to leave out and how to grab a reader's attention with Sandy Fussell. Sandy has been the Children's Book Reviewer for the Funday section of the Daily Telegraph for 3 years. In that time, she's written 688 book reviews! After attending this workshop, you might want to apply to be the South Coast Writers Centre's Young Book Reviewer in Residence in 2023.

Sandy Fussell is a children's author and book reviewer for the Sunday Telegraph Funday. Her second novel Polar Boy was selected as the National Reading Day book for primary school students in 2009, and her Samurai Kids website has been archived by the National Library of Australia Pandora Project.

Screenwriting with Morna Seres

11 January 11am-2pm at Nowra Library
12 January 11am-2pm at Ulladulla Library CANCELLED

Learn the fundamentals of screenwriting. With a focus on fiction screenwriting, we will explore character, structure, writing visually and crafting dialogue. Students will be asked to consider the type of story they want to tell, and how storytelling intersects and comes to life through a screenplay. After working out the protagonist and antagonist in their story, students will write a short outline of a story. Using this as a starting point, students will write a number of scenes focusing on character and the use of dialogue to help those scenes come to life. 

Morna Seres's debut novel Cloud Failure was awarded a 2018 Varuna Residency Fellowship and was shortlisted for the 2020 Penguin Literary Prize. Morna’s short story, The Boy On A Blue Bike was long-listed for the 2020 Peter Carey Short Story Prize. In 2021, she was awarded an honourable mention in the mainstream/literary short story category of the 2021 Writers Digest 90th Annual Writing Competition. Her short stories have been published in Grieve, Legacies and Bloom.

Poetry on Place with Nicole Smede

13 January 11am-2pm at Sanctuary Point Library

Join poet Nicole Smede for a workshop on 'Place' and our relationships to environments. Guided through a series of poetic exercises and meditations, participants will write individual and group poems exploring our connections to the natural, built, emotional and fantastical environments of 'Place'.

Nicole Smede is a multi-disciplinary artist of Worimi and European descent, living and creating on Wodi Wodi Country. Proud of her heritage, Nicole’s work explores a reclamation and reconnection of ancestry and Country, through language, poetry and song.

Untranslatable: Writing the Unwritten with Rhys Lorenc

17 January 9.30am-12pm at Shoalhaven Gallery
18 January 9.30am-12pm at Ulladulla Library

In this workshop, we’ll explore the untranslatable—things there are no words for in English, and things that are difficult to comprehend or express. We’ll create a new language for feelings and memories that are unique to us, write about non-human experiences like those of animals and trees, and explore tricky-to-imagine concepts, places and events, such as infinity and climate change. We’re going to dive out past the safe waters of what we’re used to, and come back with a few stories to tell.

Rhys Lorenc is a local writer, teacher, graduate of University of Wollongong (with a double major in Creative Writing and English Literatures) and art nerd, with a particular interest in speculative fiction. A long-time member of the Young Writers Program, Rhys co-founded the Young Writers Collective with Helena Fox in 2020 and has been leading workshops for both the Collective and the YWP for over two years. His writing can be seen in the Young Writers Collective anthology, Uncommon Words, and in Altercation Magazine.

Translating Yourself: Unique Ideas Into Stories with Helena Fox

17 January 12.30pm-3.30pm at Shoalhaven Gallery
18 January 12.30pm-3.30pm at Ulladulla Library

In this workshop you’ll look at the craft of storytelling—how to take your thoughts and unique ways of seeing the world and turn them into written works of art. You’ll play with language and form, explore your writing ‘voice’, and learn some helpful writing and editing skills. You will come out of this workshop with at least one complete piece of writing and lots of fresh ideas! After attending these workshops, you'll be encouraged to submit a piece of writing into the "Just Write" Very-Short-Story Competition through the South Coast Writers Centre, responding to the theme "Untranslatable".

Helena Fox has mentored young writers and adults for over fourteen years, running numerous creative workshops privately, in schools, and at the South Coast Writers Centre. Her debut novel How it Feels to Float won the Prime Minister's Literary Award for Young Adult Fiction, the Victorian Premier's Literary Award for Writing for Young Adults, and was shortlisted for the Queensland Literary Prize, the NSW Premiers Literary Awards, and the CBCA Book Awards.

* Untranslatable: Writing the Unwritten & Translating Yourself: Unique Ideas Into Stories are connected workshops that can be booked together as a full day or separately.



This School Holiday program is presented in a partnership between the South Coast Writers Centre, Shoalhaven Regional Art Gallery and Shoalhaven Libraries. It is part of the Holiday Break program supported by the Office for Regional Youth in partnership with Create NSW.