Thrilled to be joining Westwords to help young people develop their writing!

The email from Westwords came out of the blue and what a wonderful surprise!  Thank you so much to Michelle and the Westwords team for the invitation to participate.
I had read about Westwords (Western Sydney's Young People's Literature Development Organisation) last year, and in particular about the great Australian actor Bryan Brown becoming the program's ambassador.
See the Westwords website here: www.westwords.com.au
I think the program's mission of "changing lives across Western Sydney through literature development" is just fantastic.  Assisting our young people to develop their inner potential and thereby enabling them to contribute to progressing our society is a truly laudable and utterly worthwhile endeavour.
So, my participation, to which I'm eagerly looking forward, starts the week after next.  I'll be running some workshops on crime writing for a group of Year 11 students at Granville Boys High School.  And I'm told the lads, and their literature teacher, are just as thrilled as I am.  
Definitely new author territory for me, but I can't wait to learn young people's perspectives on crime writing, and to assist and mentor them with their own creative writing.
I just love to see young people being encouraged to be creative.  That's where out future is.  So it's great to be making my own, albeit small, contribution to that.  Hopefully I'll be able to do more of this.
Cheers,
ABP