"I got published!": Emily Morgan

We love hearing from our students no matter what they have to say, but when we hear of a student being published, we just want to shout it from the rooftops! We’re a little scared of heights, so we’ll go with a blog post instead.

Emily says:

I had a feature published in The Big Issue this week which I am so, so, so thrilled about. It focuses on what will happen to ex-service organisations like RSL and Legacy when the WWII veterans are no longer around. WWII vets make up a huge majority of the beneficiaries to welfare from the Department of Veterans Affairs, and when they go the numbers receiving support from the DVA will drop by 43%. That stat got me thinking about how RSL and other organisation will continue to have a place in the community if its membership numbers are declining so rapidly.

I had pitched a couple of features to The Big Issue prior to getting an on spec commission for this piece and I was pretty excited when the finished product was accepted. Hopefully it will lead to more opportunities to write for The Big Issue, I’ve always admired the magazine for its interesting angles and very clever social commentary pieces, I am pretty happy to have a piece published with them.

I sent this pitch after doing the Magazine and Newspaper Writing Course Stage 1 and after a follow up session with Sue White. I have no doubt that the lessons I drew from the course and my session with Sue assisted in getting the pitch right. What specifically helped me in this case was the lessons in how to analyse the magazine so that I could pitch an angle and story that was right for The Big Issue. From analysing it properly I was able to pitch a piece with the right mix of real-human experience and expert opinions, and then actually following through on that by crafting the story so it prioritised personal experience over expert opinion. That is something I wouldn’t have known how to do prior to my involvement with Australian Writers’ Centre.