Sydney Story Factory
Novella Program

Nelson Meers Foundation is supporting Story Factory’s Year of the Novella program in 2021. This is Story Factory’s flagship program for talented young writers: they come go to the Parramatta centre once a week for a year and write a novella of up to 30,000 words which is published to professional standard with the help of editors from Penguin Random House. This program saw the discovery of author Vivian Pham who was enrolled in the program when she wrote the first draft of The Coconut Children.

Story Factory aims to enrich the lives of marginalised young people through creative writing and storytelling. Their focus is on culturally and linguistically diverse, Indigenous and socioeconomically disadvantaged young people - those most at risk of losing confidence in their writing abilities and switching off at school.

Why did we fund this project? Engaging with writing as a creative art, developing a love of words and an appreciation of the power of storytelling can help marginalised young people better engage with school. It can also develop the creative and critical thinking skills essential to future success.

More information about Story Factory be found here: https://www.storyfactory.org.au