The Sofia Scholarship
How the Scholarship came about
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With the support of Janet Blagg, the Writing Connection is offering an annual scholarship consisting of a free place in our classroom courses in Perth. Janet is a professional editor and a long time supporter of the Writing Connection. She has edited many of our written works with utmost patience, sensitivity, enthusiasm and professional excellence.
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Click here to apply for the scholarship
A personal note from Janet
In 2005 I learned Horst was looking for someone to edit his course material for the online version of Working the Word. We met, and when he described the course to me I told him I would edit in exchange for being a participant in the classroom version. By the second class, I had rediscovered my imagination, last seen in primary school. I went on to edit most of Horst’s written materials, and attend many more of his courses and workshops, and at some point he announced I had a lifetime entre into any of his classes. Alas, I am no longer in Perth, but still like to edit for Horst — I think his work with metaphor and imagination is profoundly valuable to the human psyche and feel very pleased and privileged to support it. I also find editing his material very soothing for me. When after the Delphi book he said he wanted to repay me, I suggested he let someone who might not otherwise afford it take my free place in his courses. He agreed with enthusiasm.
Janet can be contacted via her website Yellow Wallpaper
From Janet's website
I have been involved in book publishing since 1984, editing fiction and non-fiction for children and adults, for Penguin, McPhee Gribble, Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press and Heinemann in Melbourne, and for UWA Press and Fremantle Press in Perth. I have prepared several hundred manuscript assessments and reader’s reports, for the industry and privately. Once, I was on the other side of the red pen, ghost-writing a memoir for Pan Macmillan.
I received an Australia Council Editor-in-Residence fellowship in 1995, which I served at the Institute for Aboriginal Development Press. I have given talks and workshops on writing, editing and language, and am passionate about the politics of nonsexist language and political correctness. (There’s far more to ‘PC’ than meets the eye; if interested, I have written a short polemic about it.)
I find special satisfaction in helping new authors develop their talents. Several award-winning novels I edited (including Nathan Hobby’s The Fur, Donna Mazza’s The Albanian, Kate McCaffrey’s Destroying Avalon and In Ecstasy, and Alice Nelson’s The Last Sky) were by first-time authors.
Since 2012, I have worked with a number of writers referred to me by a leading Australian Literary Agent. In several cases my work has helped bring a MS over the threshold and publishing contracts have been achieved.
Mole Creek in northern Tasmania is now my home, not far from Cradle Mountain.