I am here for the people that cared for me and the people I care for, whether that be the Year 8 student needing access to a well-resourced library, or an amateur writer’s access to an ambitious literary community.

My big break came at age sixteen, when my teacher nominated me for a free literacy program designed for marginalised young people, hosted at my local arts centre. It was Bankstown. 2017. With no word limit to restrain me, I wrote a 90,000-word coming-of-age story inspired by my father’s experience as a boat refugee and my own upbringing in the shadow of displacement. That novel The Coconut Children was published in 2020. I say this to speak to the vast network that needed to be in place for me to be able to take that initial opportunity: my teacher, the arts centre, the not-for-profit organisation, their volunteers.

My experiences show how books make communities and how communities make books. Before a story is imagined to be, it is imagined to be in your hands, in the local library, on stage at the theatre across the street.

Stories make less strangers. Their imperative is to enlarge our capacity for empathy, their cornerstones are beauty and meaning, and they are directed not by conflict but by conflict resolution. Through these they assure us that another world is possible, and in so doing remind us of our civic duties of equality, respect and care.

James Baldwin once said that the sin of the writer is despair, and to tell the truth, I’m terrified for the arts. But perhaps the writer’s virtue is hope, and my greatest wish for this inaugural Creative Statement, and for all Creative Statements to come, is that they are instruments of hope.