Cassandra Li, Naima Amrin, Solomiya Sywak, Sanchana Venkatesh and Wayne Mok have been selected to take part in the Cultivate Mentorship Program for Emerging Writers from Diverse Backgrounds. The five will work with writer and editor Huyen Hac Helen Tran over the coming months to take an existing work of theirs and prepare it for submission to a journal or anthology.

Helen was impressed by the applicants’ “capacity to place themselves and their work as part of a growing process”, and their willingness to learn and take on new ideas. Although they wrote across a range of genres and content, they all shared a high degree of “passion, creativity, critical thinking, and a trust in their own selves”. As emerging writers with distinct and diverse voices and experiences they showed “why they want to share their work and how they want to evolve it.” Helen is looking forward to engaging with the successful applicants individually, and as a group, as they develop their works towards a submission stage.

Helen is a Vietnamese-Australian writer and arts worker currently living and working on Gadigal land. Her writing and research revolve around digital poetics, cultural inheritance, the body, care, and personal narrative, and her works can be found in Liminal Magazine, Meanjin, The Suburban Review, The Big Issue, and more.

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. It is open to emerging NSW-based writers from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. Read about winners from previous years here.