Sylvia Schmidt

Creative Writing, 2022

My name is Sylvia Schmidt and I am a nearly graduated, mature aged creative writing student.  This is my fourth degree and I already have a Bachelor of Arts (Linguistics and Gender Studies) from ANU, a Graduate Diploma in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages from UC and a Masters of Liberal Arts, also from ANU.  The specialisation for my Masters was Biography and this was primarily a history degree, but did include some creative writing components.  This inspired me to take up creative writing as my next option and has created a love for this discipline.  I’ve discovered a talent for writing young adult fiction, surprisingly for someone who has not been a young adult for two decades, and also a love for writing about place.  The attached work is something I submitted for the unit on Writing People and Place.

Creative travel writing, the likes of Bill Bryson or Elizabeth Gibson, is where I see my studies taking me.