Chief Minister's Reading Challenge 2024 Address

I am proud to be an ambassador of the Chief Minister's Reading Challenge, an initiative that promotes reading within the ACT. As an Ambassador, I have the wonderful task of visiting schools to speak with students about reading and writing.

This year I had the honour of speaking at the Challenge Awards ceremony. Below is my address, offered on behalf of myself and the other ambassadors.

Hello everyone, it is such a pleasure to be here with you today. 

Before I begin, I would like to acknowledge the Traditional Owners of the land we are gathered on, the Ngunnawal and Ngambri Peoples, and offer my respect to their elders past and present. I would also like to extend that respect to any Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people here with us today.

My name is Emma and I am a queer writer and author from here in Kamberri (Canberra). I grew up within our public school system: first at Maribyrnong and Palmerston Primary schools and then at Lyneham High and Dickson College. In all of my schooling, I was fortunate to have access to a library filled with all kinds of magical books and to have a love of reading and writing nurtured within me. 

I have had the privilege of being an ambassador for the Chief Minister’s Reading Challenge for three years now. As a professional writer and author, being able to visit young people, including many of you here today, in the spaces where you read and learn, continues to be a cherished experience for me. Answering your questions, talking with you about the books you love and the things you want to write about remains one of my favourite things.

I have always been a great reader. As a shy, young, autistic person, reading was a huge comfort to me; it was a safe way to gain insight into the lives and worlds of others from the comfort of my room. Reading was also an important portal to connection; not only did characters in the books I read become dear friends, talking about books with other people helped me find friends in real life too.

And then, as an older person, I discovered writing: short form articles at first, then editing and publishing before moving on to a novel. Rather fantastically and unexpectedly, this novel, my debut, called ‘Now that I see you’ which you can find upstairs in the wonderful NLA bookshop, became the winner of the Australian/Vogel Literary Award. 

That prize, both the experience of my work being published and the amount of money I received, completely changed my life. It allowed me to leave my full time job and to re-centre my life around my creative practice and advocating for the arts.

I have since written a second novel with project funding support from artsACT, I am currently a resident artist at The Street Theatre developing the script for an interdisciplinary work that brings together my writing and dance practices and I am also the recipient of a Screen Canberra fellowship to study screenwriting at the University of Canberra. As wonderful and as exciting as all these opportunities are, writing is hard work, it takes time and effort and many, many drafts!

Perhaps the work I am most proud of, is my advocacy work within the arts community. I am the Chair of MARION, our region’s arts organisation dedicated to elevating writers and their art. I am also a member of the Minister’s Creative Council where I provide strategic advice to our Minister of the Arts. This work importantly connects me to my community and allows me to advocate for the safe, fair and sustainable working conditions of those working within the arts, from people just starting out in their creative practice to those who are established and working professionally.

As much as possible, I strive to be both visible and available, to support as many people as I can in pursuing their creative dreams, whatever they may be. Being an Ambassador of the Chief Minister’s Reading Challenge allows me to do just that and I am truly grateful to be here with you today, celebrating this important milestone for the Challenge.

To the young people in this room, I hope you will leave today knowing that careers within the arts are not only possible, but vital. Artists are the people who create and shape culture, who channel their magic through whatever artistic medium they choose to create meaningful change. Even if you don’t go on to pursue professional practice, the skills you learn from working creatively and collaboratively with your friends and peers will stay with you and influence the person you might become. 

And to all of the adults in the room, thank you. Thank you for encouraging a love of reading, writing and creativity. Thank you for putting that love front and centre through initiatives such as the Chief Minister’s Reading Challenge. Programs like this, that bring professional artists into schools, can and absolutely do change the lives of young people.  

Thank you.