The Byron Writers Festival’s annual residential mentorship recently wrapped up, after four emerging writers from the region spent a week doing intense workshops and manuscript development.
They all were under the guidance of local author and Walkley Award-winning journalist, Sarah Armstrong.
Emily Harris, who has been writing a rural noir novel set in a small community similar to her own, says, ‘This opportunity has afforded me the courage and confidence to begin the major rewrite my manuscript requires. While this is incredibly daunting, it actually feels achievable now’.
Offered guidance
‘It’s been a real joy to offer guidance and feedback to these writers over the last five days,’ said Sarah Armstrong. ‘I was impressed by how engaged they were — with their own work and with each other’s.
‘The residential mentorship is an important way in which Byron Writers Festival supports local writers – a number of past participants have gone on to be published.’
Sarah speaks with authority; her own first published work, Salt Rain, was nurtured in the inaugural year of the mentorship.
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