Marwa Hijazi, Joshua Abrokwah, Lina Jabbour, Sonny Arifien and Judi Morison have been selected to take part in the Cultivate Mentorship Program for Emerging Writers from Diverse Backgrounds. The five will work with Eugen Bacon over the coming months to prepare a work for submission to a journal or anthology.

Three others, An Ngo, Skye Paez, and Michael Gunawan were highly commended by Eugen, who also judged the applications.

Eugen said of the process that she was “deeply touched by the large number of applications we received for this inspiring initiative in a mentoring program for emerging writers from diverse backgrounds. I appreciated the mix of form and genre: short stories, narrative non-fiction, prose poetry, novel… and the participant statements on what the mentorship would mean to them were they selected.

“Thank you to all who took time to apply. I am grateful for your trust in sharing your excerpts and aspirations for the future with me. Please believe in your work, and I hope you’ll hone your project and find an excellent home for it.”

The five successful writers will work with Eugen to develop a manuscript and prepare it for submission to a journal or anthology.

The Cultivate Mentorship Program for Emerging Writers from Diverse Backgrounds is an annual program developed by Writing NSW to help build equity and diversity in the writing community.