Spark creative thinking.
Hyphen - Wodonga Library Gallery presents a learning event open to all students aged 12 to 18.
IGNITE is a day-long event discussing writing, life, big ideas and finding your voice. Featuring a series of panel talks and workshops themed around empowering young people to express their ideas.
Each student will have the opportunity to attend two break-out workshops on the day. Students and teachers will also attend panels by guest speakers in the auditorium throughout the day.
Guest speakers:
Ange Crawford
Ange Crawford is a queer and autistic author, PhD candidate and editor living in Richmond, Melbourne, on the unceded lands of the Wurundjeri people. Her debut YA contemporary novel, How to Be Normal, won the inaugural Walker Books Manuscript Prize and has been named a CBCA Notable Book, as well as shortlisted in the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards and the Readings Prize. Ange has been writing stories for herself and her loved ones since early childhood (beginning with fanfiction for a favourite TV show, Captain Planet, written with love in crayon). She started writing novels as a teenager, after attending youth workshops at the Queensland Writers Centre – the place she first realised that she might, in fact, be a writer.
Helena Fox
Helena Fox is an author, poet and creative writing mentor, living on Dharawal Country in Wollongong, Australia. She has written two prize-winning novels, How It Feels to Float and The Quiet and the Loud. Helena founded the Young Writers Program at the South Coast Writers Centre, and she is passionate about helping people of all ages find and speak their voice. Helena received her MFA in Creative Writing from Warren Wilson College (USA) and is currently a PhD candidate at Western Sydney University.
Kaede Miyamura
Kaede Miyamura is an Australian Writers’ Guild Award (AWGIE) nominated emerging filmmaker with a specific interest in writing and directing. A 2022 graduate of the Victorian College of the Arts (VCA), her films Housekeepers and Kotoba have been selected into various local and international film festivals including the Chicago International Children’s Film Festival, St Kilda Film Festival and FlickerFest. Kotoba and Housekeepers are currently hosted on SBS on Demand. She frequently works in writers’ rooms for Australian and International television and feature film projects. Having immigrated from Japan at age 7, Kaede grew up bilingual in a mixed culture environment, developing her interest in exploring ideas surrounding third culture, immigration, and parentification.
Megan Riedl
Megan J Riedl is a nationally recognised spoken word performer. She was awarded Queensland Poetry’s 2021 XYZ Innovation in Spoken Word Prize and was an Australian Poetry Slam Victorian State Finalist for three consecutive years. Megan has performed spoken word across Victoria, from the Eureka Centre to Federation Square, and her writing has been exhibited everywhere from the Immigration Museum to a vending machine at Geelong Library. A master facilitator with a teaching qualification, Megan has delivered creative workshops for a wide range of clients, including libraries, schools, and theatre companies. Her powerful performance poetry fearlessly gives voice to the secret stories we tell ourselves and creates compelling calls to action.
Shivaun Plozza
Shivaun Plozza is the award-winning children’s and young adult author of Frankie, Tin Heart, The Boy, the Wolf and the Stars, A Reluctant Witch’s Guide to Magic, Meet Me at the Moon Tree, The Worst Perfect Moment, Summer of Shipwrecks and, her latest, Running in Circles. Her writing has been shortlisted for the CBCA Book of the Year Award, the Queensland Literary Awards, the Australian Book Industry Awards and the Gold Inky Award. She won the Davitt Award for Best Young Adult Crime Novel in 2017. When she’s not writing, she works as a freelance manuscript assessor and as a teacher for Faber Writing Academy. She lives in Geelong with her cat, Fenchurch.
Dean Rankine
Dean Rankine is a Ledger and Stanley Award winning comic book artist, illustrator, writer and painter on the ABC's, Portrait Artist of the Year. He's best known for his work on Simpsons Comics and Rick and Morty. His other credits include; Futurama, Invader Zim, Hellboy, Underdog, Oggy and the Cockroaches, The Phantom, I Hate Fairyland and The Riverdale Diaries: Starring Veronica. He's the illustrator of the Brock the Croc series, On The First Day Of School and the Timmy the Ticked-Off Pony series (written by Magda Szubanski). He's also the writer/illustrator of, Freaky Tales: Can You Find the Piggies?, Can You Find the Easter Bunny?, Can You Find the Easter Bunny? Around Australia, Can You Find Santa's Elves?, Mrs Snitch is a Witch and the Death Metal Emo Elves series.