Graduate

“Summer had panted like a hot dog that year, it had extended its parched tongue and begged for relief, but for two and a half months, none came. Not a single drop of rain. My mother had joked that it was God punishing us for all the water we’d used on the new town pool, but it wasn’t really funny, and no one had laughed. Tanned skin became darker as the dirt lightened and grass bleached, and clouds slowly reclaimed the river until it was just a winding trench of dirt, piercing its way through red rock and scraggly bush.”

Excerpt from “A Stretching Summer”, Rose Forrest.

A career in writing

The weekly discipline of writing stories gave Rose Forrest her passion for the arts, fostering her interest in a career in writing.

“I essentially grew up in The Writing Workshop,” Rose says.

At university Rose has fallen in love with screenwriting. She intends to complete her Masters towards the goal of becoming a screenwriter. As well as this, she eventually wants to move onto novel writing.  She writes a regular column for her university college newspaper and has had non-fiction articles published in Rosie Blog (see, for example, this piece on women in science [the blog’s name is unrelated] ).

In 2017, still in her final year of school, Rose’s short story “A Stretching Summer” won the John Marsden and Hachette Australia Prize in fiction.

a Writing Workshop veteran

Rose attributes much of her passion for writing to her years attending workshops.

“I loved The Writing Workshop,” she said. “I loved having a space to be creative every week. The Writing Workshop definitely sparked my love for writing, and helped me to push my own creative boundaries, and I’ll always be grateful for that.”

Having shown an interest in writing from a young age, Rose used the weekly workshops to foster her creativity, while developing her individual writing style and voice. “The opportunity to get together and drink tea and write every week was absolutely fantastic,” she said.

“The opportunity to get together and drink tea and write every week was absolutely fantastic.”

“Working with Bernard was awesome, he gave really useful and constructive advice about writing, and it really helped having someone who knew so much about the field as a mentor. The advice combined with the weekly writing activities we did meant that we were all able to flourish as writers and push ourselves creatively.”

With weekly topics allowing students to think outside the box and interact with a variety of forms of writing, Rose found pride in her work and enjoyed being able to share this with others.

Rose recommends The Writing Workshop to everyone — not just aspiring writers.

“Even if you don’t want to go into a field that involves writing, it still provides invaluable advice on how to tell a great story.

“The Writing Workshop changed the trajectory of my life and I am very grateful for that. It helped me to do something that I loved and that I was passionate about, and it inspired me to be creative.”

With a writing-filled future ahead of her, Rose looks forward to the rest of her degree and wherever her passion for screenwriting might take her.

Rose spoke with Emily Gibbs.

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