June has been declared National Young Writers Month by Australian literary organisation Express Media. NYWM is a new initiative by the organisation to get young people to start writing by forming a community of young writers and setting aside July as a month for people to set and achieve a ‘goal’.

Here’s how it works – You register here, and set yourself a goal. Then you have access to forums blogs, events, and articles, so you can interact with a community that will support you and help you to achieve your goal.

This is a national event so it is running right across Australia! Every state has a representative ambassador to get their state involved and support you in your writing goals, and the NT ambassador is Finn O’Branagain!!!

From the Website:

“Finn is an emerging writer, director, actor & designer and 2011 Youth Arts Queensland JUMP mentee. She has performed and presented work at various festivals and events nationally, including directing short plays in the Darwin Fringe festival, performing in horror yowie physical theatre piece ‘Acacia Hills’ at the Melbourne Fringe Festival, performing her poetry at the Young Writers’ Festival, Wordstorm, and the inaugural Nightwords festival at the Sydney Opera House. She was a finalist of the NT Young Achiever of the Year award, and has also been a winner and a finalist for her short films in the Fist Full of Films Festival.”

Check out this awesome video Finn has made, along with Katherine, another ambassador for the NT!!!

For more information visit www.expressmedia.org.au/nywm/

Applications are open for Express Media’s ‘Write In Your Face’ program. From the website:

“Each year Express Media gives young people, or people working with young people, the chance to apply to Write in Your Face, a program of support funded by the Literature Board of the Australia Council .

In 2011, Express Media once again invites proposals from young writers who are using language in innovative ways.

You may apply for up to $5000 but must be aged 30 years or younger (or work with people 30 years or younger) at the time of application to apply.”

The selection criteria include innovation and excellence of your work, potential of your own artistic development, and evidence of planning and structure. The money can be used on anything where the primary focus is on writing and telling a story.

Previous winners have made websites (like the 12 word story website), started graphic novels (Like Pat Grant’s Blue), or even produced literary journals (like Dot Dot Dash).

For more information, and an application form, click here.

To check it out, yours truly headed to the first of their sessions. Hip hopping and dancing doesn’t normally come naturally to me, but my fellow hip-hop newbs* and I were pleasantly surprised at how simple the basics were. From there, the brilliant instructors/artists/awesome people showed how to build on the basics and with only two or three moves, people were already mixing it up and had made some awesome routines.

In just an hour and twenty minutes, I’d managed to get up on my shoulders and head, do basic ‘footwork’ and spun around on the ground while listening to Latino style grooves. And the others in the group were pretty much at his level or better! One guy managed to spin his legs in the air while standing on his head, while another managed to invent a few moves of his own. Everyone, by the way, taking part aside from the guys running it had never danced or been instructed in hip hop before.

The instructors are chill, hip hop is easy to get into and looks cool, plus hip hop can be done to almost any music with a beat and it’s awesome fun, so head down to their workshops. Or get involved in one of the other cool programs the Libraries offer like KAOS or Red Hot Readers! Times are below if you are interested in the hip hop workshop:

*newbs = Newbie. popular in Internet and Gaming slang. Basically means that we were TERRIBLE at the start!

Just do what I learnt to do, no idea? I’ll give you a clue

It’s what I now brew and what you should get into

Screw those who give you a bad review and

Sue those wont let you debut by showing them that you grew

From who you were to something new and improved.

Rhyme is no crime

So keep that in mind the next time that you do rhyme

It’s fine, infact its simply sublime

Give it a try in any place or at any time

Whether it’s rain, snow or shine

Just combine and refine to design

A divine article, song or a single line

So go out and shine show the rest you have a spine

And can intertwine your rhyme

To create a nice thick vine of lines.

Rhyme is used in poetry

To build on harmony and it is the key

To guarantee that your meaning is seen

Go out and rhyme like crazy and people will see

That you are free and mean what you decree

Rhyming persuades and will give you good grades

So on your crusade be not afraid to invade a blockade and

Pull yourself out of the shade and into a parade.

Make your heart beat to the sound

Of the sweet words in which you complete

Don’t cheat yourself, don’t retreat

Just compete and defeat the people you meet on the street

By excreting your tweets

Cause inside you is concrete raw meat

A beast which you need to release.

Just take a chance, make a stance

With your words as your lance and

Enhance your chants to advance

Through life cause life is a game of chance…

Plus Rhyming is awesome

The world’s heating up and there is no better action than to take a reaction towards this climate diffraction. The recent frustration has people in desperation for a simple explanation, showing them how our fundamental interaction is causing a massive transformation of our planet. We must make and take a plan of action, so the next generation can continue to live in this world with the realisation, that we are not the only ones.

Windmills use the breeze and replace burning trees as a better means of forming electricity. There are Hydrokinetic turbines that are designed to refine the energy of water waves when they both combine. Solar panels dismantle the sun’s rays to channel and save potential energy.

These means do not come cheap but are definitely greening our scene and mainly unseen so be serene in our clean energy.

If you found this article to be quite appealing, then I hope you understood the meaning, and had the feeling that you should not be concealing, that you should be intervening and greening the planet in which we are leaving for the next generation.

Naughty Stories for Good Boys and Girls.

These stories were full of win. Packed with gruesome stories of farting and picking boogers, my year 5 teacher Mr. V had us in stitches at story time.  If you never read one your childhood was probably spent crying in the cupboard unaware of how hilarious bodily functions could be. I pity you.

The series consists of 13 sets of short stories published by Milne Books in 2000 with the first book in the series winning the Young Australian Best Book Award.

Why it’s a Nostalgia WIN

For one thing, it was Australian, not American like Sesame Street or British like our good friend Harry but pure, true blue, put-a-shrimp-on-the-barbie Aussie. Secondly, Naughty Stories for Good Boys and Girls was nothing like any other book our teachers would ever let us read – not that we wanted to read anyway. It was crude and made us feel dangerous; so while we sat in the corner laughing our heads off reading about ghouls and pranks and swear words, poor old Sally two shoes and her lost puppy remained in the cupboard under a fine layer of neglected book dust with the other boring morals.

Isabella Swan moves to a small, dull town called Forks. As her first day begins she notices that the Cullens, particularly Edward Cullen, hate her. As time goes by Bella becomes more and more fascinated with his porcelain skin and golden eyes. She notices how they all walk gracefully and look the same, but are her theories right? Are Edward and his family all vampires? Is she putting herself and others at risk? The book begins with love, and action leading to a suspenseful ending. You must read the book to know all the answers. It will keep you reading non-stop just like me.

If you like this book read the next two in the trilogy: “Newmoon” and “Eclipse”.

Reserve/Borrow a copy now!

The snow fell down so hard on them it might have been hail; the wind was not so kind either. The howling wind freezing with snow blew right through her very soul. Despite her body’s wish to turn around and go back to the warm village, she not once stopped to look back. She kept pursuing him through the blistering storm, the tall dark figure shrouded in darkness. The only way she knew he was still there was because the snow and wind seemed to touch him as he hovered on top of the deep snow.

“Why do you continue to follow me, are you not content with the agony you have caused me already?”. His voice was harsh and cruel, driving his words like a blade into the young woman’s freezing heart.

“NO!” she cried against the wind “It’s not true, I would never betray you! I could never hurt you!”.

The sound of angry priests approached shouting blasphemous curses in Latin, trying desperately to catch up to the two of them. Frightened she turned to the tall man cloaked in black, her eyes wide with cold tears falling down her cheeks. The hood covering his face made it impossible for her to see where the single red tear fell from.

Chapter 2: Birth of an angel part 1

Angel awoke for the first time in three days. She lifted herself up with tired arms that shook as she sat up. Her head was so heavy that she thought it may just crumple back down. Her eyes were blurred to the point that she might as well be looking through tracing paper. As she looked around, she noticed that the room was painfully bright. Slowly her senses came back to her. She instantly noticed irritating beeping noises all around her. She looked at her arm, there were  enough needles in both arms to fill a pin cushion. She followed the drips up to a series of machines, they seemed to be monitoring something.

She thought to herself she might be in a hospital, but it was a brief thought before she grabbed the needles and ripped them out of her arms. She had never liked needles, especially when they were connected to strange machines.

The white corridors seemed to go on for ever. Every corner she took was the same as the one before. There were no doors or windows in the endless white maze. It felt like she had been running forever yet she had not once lost her breath or felt tired.  Finally, by what she thought to be a stroke of luck, she turned down a corridor which was unlike the other ones. It was dark and gloomy, so dark that it absorbed the white of the corridor, engulfing it and turning it into an eerie mist that seemed to leak from the deeper parts of the darkness. She could just barely see the shape of a door at the end of this perpetual abyss of nothingness. It was a large black door that emitted a glow that most would describe as evil.  Above the door handle there resonated a symbol, the symbol seemed to be dripping upon closer observation. It too was a blood red. “Jezz” she sighed, “Doesn’t anyone in this place have the slightest clue of how to use other colors than white, black and red”.

He could feel every droplet touch him, each leaving an imprint, each with a memory of its own. Every touch felt like a heavy pressure with the weight of a secret that has been locked away for years. Every droplet released a food of expression and reminded him of what he forgot and chose not to share. A replay of a past he had tried to forget.

The man’s eyes were closed, but his ears were open to the sounds that were so alien yet so deeply embedded into his mind, that they sounded familiar. The sound was so clear, as though he could hear every drop hit the ground; hear it vibrate through his body like a shockwave, making his mind race with images they contained. The sound was deafening even to his already near-deaf ears.

The smell of the atmosphere filled him, running through his senses like wildfire. He could smell the moisture as his mind replicated these for the past. Memories. The thick humidity drenched him with not only water, but a deeper thought, something that cut into his senses more than a simple drop of water could. Locked away, its hidden metaphor; a reality that he substituted for rain.

He opened his mouth, the water filling up his cheeks as he let it run down his chin and join the rest of the water as it soaked his clothes. A sweet refreshing taste of clean water warped his clear headedness and it was the final straw of sanity. A vivid slideshow of the past printed itself from behind his closed eyelids. Tears trickled down his cheeks and mixed in with the rain. The water represented to him, a year of torment, a year of hardship and a year of rain and death. The shower of rain was transformed into a shower of bullets that cascaded down upon them from the dense twilight from unseen enemies. The loud crash of thunder represented the deafening explosions of grenades. The lightning struck all around him, like fingers reaching out to grab at him, to take whatever was left of his sight that a landmine had taken from him with its burning lights that fried his retinas. The hard downpour filled his cupped hands as he sipped the contents, it tasted as sweet as it had when he first came home, but as stained with hardship, as it had when he first got there.

All these memories swirled around him and crashed home as hard as the rain did. He could remember the time where even the fresh smell that rain brings, brought a knot to his stomach. He could remember everyday that it rained, and the few that it didn’t. The times where it was as close to heaven that life could have been were the days when they could see the sky.He hated rain, he hated water. But with each droplet, the anger melted away till he was just left with his thoughts, and the fading sounds of the ending rain.

“Papa? What are you doing out here? You’ll catch a cold!” A girl of twenty placed her hand on the old man’s shoulder.

“I was just remembering Kakoda…”