Our story

Once upon a time in a small utility room at Annandale North...

The Writing Workshop began in a small utility room at Annandale North Public School in 2006.

Founder Bernard Cohen wanted to give young people the chance to work directly with authors. Since then, published authors have led every one of The Writing Workshop's approximately 6000 workshop sessions.

Over fourteen years and fifty terms later, we're still at ANPS every Thursday afternoon - but now you can also find our after-school workshops in Eastwood, Marsfield (Kent Rd), and Leichhardt. We also run holiday workshops at Sydney Olympic Park and in-school workshops for teachers and students all over NSW.

"This was the best day of my life!"

8 year old on completing Spy Stories school holiday workshop.

We have taught over 80,000 young people, workshopped in dozens of schools, worked with many libraries and community organisations, and read somewhere about 350,000 pieces of writing by young people (surely a record).