Jasmine Baker, Adriana Mucea, Esther Steenge, Fale Tumanu, and Bianca Urbina have been selected to take part in the Cultivate Mentorship Program for First Nations and Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Emerging Writers. The five writers will work with Huyen Hac Helen Tran over the coming months to take an existing piece of fiction or non-fiction and prepare it for submission to a journal or anthology.
Tran commented, ‘The chosen applicants all held an earnestness in how the mentorship experience would be beneficial to them, seeing the program not just as a way to edit one piece of writing to try and publish, but as a creative learning experience to aid the continued development of their writing practices. These five recipients placed their commitments to the growing and sometimes arduous process of writing and editing at the centre of their pitches.’
She remarked on the quality of the applicants this year, ‘Overall, the applications this year had an even larger spread of genres than the year previous. A common theme among the pitches were historical fiction works that were either retellings of fairy tales or folklore, or generational family sagas. Sometimes, both! A lot of the applicants also submitted work that circled around the tensions and conflicts between past, present, and future. Many asked questions on what healing and grief look like in today’s milieu – in relation to difficult family dynamics, displacement, and inherited cultural trauma.’ Helen is looking forward to engaging with the successful applicants individually, and as a group, as they develop their works towards a submission stage.
The Cultivate Mentorship Program for First Nations and Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Emerging Writers is an annual program developed by Writing NSW to help build equity and diversity in the writing community and is supported by Create NSW. It is open to emerging NSW-based writers from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. Read about winners from previous years here.
Huyen Hac Helen Tran 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. She is currently completing a Masters Degree in Literature and Creative Writing at Western Sydney University, where she is researching and writing on digital poetics. She is the Digital Communications Officer at Sydney Review of Books, and is the recipient of the 2025 Whitlam Essay Residency program.
Jasmine Baker is a Lebanese-Australian bilingual storyteller, performer, and poet residing on Dharug Land. Her creative practice spans narrative, verse, lyrical, and prose poetry, often navigating the complexities of the Lebanese diaspora, heritage, and the digital sphere. A WestWords Alumni and 2025 Varuna Emerging Writers Residency participant, she has been featured on SBS World News and has performed at major cultural festivals, including Vivid Sydney and the SSI New Beginnings Festival, as well as schools and libraries across Sydney. Her work is deeply informed by her multilingual and multifaith identity and her experience in the high-energy world of poetry slams. She often utilises an “alien” or “other” lens to examine themes of displacement, cultural memory, friendships, and the body. Beyond her creative work, she brings a profound depth of human experience to her writing through her professional role in domestic and family violence support and her university studies in child psychology. Currently, she is developing five manuscripts that blend CALD perspectives with speculative fiction and hybrid forms. Her work aims to bridge the gap between ancient lyrical traditions and modern narrative structures. When not writing, she manages Beaux Petits Enfants, an educational storytelling programme centred on diversity and inclusion. She is committed to carving out a professional space for hybrid poets in the Australian literary landscape.
Adriana Mucea is a passionate emerging writer whose work spans short prose, mainly science fiction and crime fiction themed, and poetry. Her stories often explore human emotion and the imaginative possibilities of the speculative world. Alongside her fiction, her poetry captures fragments of everyday life events. When she is not drafting new work, Adriana creates blackout poems, transforming newspaper or magazine articles into something entirely her own.
Adriana’s work has appeared in West Words BAD Western Sydney The Second Case (Australia), Synkroniciti Magazine (USA), Duck Duck Mongoose Magazine (USA), Whatever’s Left: A Blackout Poetry Zine(Scotland).
In her daily life, Adriana works as a high school English teacher, where she shares her enthusiasm for literature and encourages students to discover their own voices through reading and writing. Adriana was born and raised in Romania but emigrated to Australia as an adult.
Esther Steenge is 31-year-old dietitian from the Netherlands who grew up falling in love with words in her native language Dutch. She moved to Australia about 3.5 years ago and has finally decided it’s time to face her fears of English so she can do what she loves – write. You’ll likely find Esther out in nature, going for a run, rolling dice in a game of Dungeons & Dragons, lost in a good book, or journaling while having her third coffee of the day. Esther is incredibly grateful to be part of the NSW writing community. She’s here to challenge herself, grow, and give it her absolute best and hopefully learn to put her heart and honest thoughts on paper in another language.
Fale Tumanu is a Sāmoan writer, poet and performer with ancestral ties to Falealili and Saleimoa. She currently resides in western Sydney and creates on Dharawal land. A proud brown storyteller, she champions the autonomy of narrative and the importance of magnifying Pasefika representation in the arts. Her work explores cultural identity, migration, and gritty realism. She has performed at several poetry events across western Sydney, including the prestigious NSW Pacific Council Awards. She is a co-founder of the Tagata Moana Writers, a hub space centered on nurturing Pasefika writers and creatives. Fale featured in One Ocean, Many Waves and created her one-woman theatre performance called Tautua: A Journey, both developed through Shopfront Arts Co-op programs.
Bianca Urbina lives and works on Darug and Gundungurra country. She is a writer with a background in education, music and anthropology. Currently working as a primary school teacher, Bianca enjoys writing historical fiction with a splash of fantasy. She takes particular interest in bringing stories of the past to the Young Adult reader. Bianca transforms historical narratives into a rich tapestry of political and cultural perspectives. As a Spanish-speaking Chilean-Australian, she loves to weave folklore, myth and legend with historical events, people and places.
