Student Successes: 2 of Us, typewriters and more…

“It all started with a slippery satin ribbon at the local races. A kindly gentleman offered to re-tie my offending ribbon (on the back of my dress), and as he tied he dropped his rather official looking clipboard. He was the race starter and from him I met all the stewards of country racing and then the trainers of the horses.”

That was Mandy McKeesick revealing how her chance meeting with Peter and Nathan Sinclair led to an interview for a first article and then national attention with her 2 of Us piece in Good Weekend magazine in September – submitted on spec as she knew it was a great story. “Good country boys getting the national attention they deserve,” hollers Mandy. And a good writer doing the same! Well done.

Staying with the The Sydney Morning Herald/The Age, we’ve spotted a few writers in those pages this month. Justine Hyde was one of them, with her fascinating story on writers and their clickity-clackity-ping obsession with old-school typewriters. Anything to do with typewriters is always a favourite with our Valerie, so Justine gets bonus points for that!

Sarah H let us know about her piece on 16-year-old Gabriel and the events surrounding his stroke – focussing on the condition that caused it, the people who treated him, and his recovery since. Oh, and did we mention it was the cover story for the SA Weekend magazine in The Advertiser! To be cover story worth really does mean the editor likes your story, and thinks readers will too  – so well done Sarah! “Australian Writers’ Centre gave me the confidence to pitch the idea in the first place and taught me some essential skills about putting together a feature article,” she said.

Heading online, we spotted Michaela Fox’s 11 precious things about parenting preschoolers in Kidspot magazine (if we had to pick four faves, we’d go with 2, 6, 8 and 11…) and Alecia Wood was celebrating Swedish Kraftskiva on the delicious digital pages of SBS.

And finally this week, it’s congratulations to History, Mystery Magic graduate Daniel Brako, who last year had his book Doors published by Momentum. The story is about a psychologist who encounters doors that no one else can see, but they come at a cost. Ooooooh. We’ll have a more in-depth interview with Daniel on the blog soon!

If you have a success story to share with us, you can do so right here. We’ll share it with the world!