Before our class met Maddie, students had an understanding that writing could be hard or inspired and that writers normally had to have another job to survive financially. What student learnt from having Maddie in our class was that you don’t have to be immediately good at something to begin doing it. We also learnt that feedback from others is important, but to pick when and who we receive feedback from and not to let it stop us following our dreams. We also learnt that you don’t have to pick just one genre as an author, but can move between styles of writing, that authors have unfinished manuscripts in drawers and not to expect everyone to like what we are writing; that feedback is inherently subjective.

Maddie is the author of ‘Some People Want to Shoot Me’ (written with Elder Wayne Bergmann, shortlisted for the WA Premiers Award in 2025), ‘Troppo’ and ‘Red Can Origami’, as well as part of the surf writing anthology, ‘Lines on the Horizon’.

We are really grateful to Maddie for coming to speak with our class and for so generously sharing her knowledge as we refine our own craft as emerging writers. Her honesty, humour and passion is an inspiration to us all!