Well, I’ve come to the end of another period of Create NSW Small Project Grant funding, and it’s been a hugely productive time. Over the past 12 months, I’ve made significant progress on ‘One Fork, One Knife, One Life’ – a work of creative nonfiction (definitely not a ‘small’ project!) that explores my Dutch mother’s wartime and immigration experiences and our mother/daughter relationship. Back in April 2021, I was one of five regional NSW writers invited to take part in Orana Arts’ inaugural inScribe Program – a six-month online mentoring program with lead writer and mentor, Roanna Gonsalves, to develop a short piece on the theme of ‘Centres and Peripheries’ (forthcoming ‘bespoke’ publication in March 2022). This program also included a residency at The CORRIDOR Project in Cowra. I learned so much from Roanna and my peers through this generous program; after the program finished, the inScribe writers decided to continue to meet for a weekly online writing group – and we’re planning to meet in the real world for a second residency at The CORRIDOR Project in Cowra later this year. Because I enjoyed Roanna’s writing workshops so much – and missed them when they were over – I enrolled in an 8-week online Advanced Memoir Writing Masterclass with Patti Miller (through Writing NSW), and then formed a weekly online feedback group with two of the writers that I connected with from the course. Such a gift! Towards the end of the year, I completed a 6-week ‘Artist Residency in Motherhood’ – where I committed to the challenge of writing (at least) one page a day, and to stay calm and creative amidst the daily disruptions and busyness that are still part of my life as a mother, even though my four children are nearly all grown up. Finally, way back in 2020, I was awarded a New England Writers’ Centre/Varuna Fellowship and also a BREW Residency (Bush Retreats for Eco-Writers’) – both residencies were cancelled various times due to Covid lockdowns but are now scheduled for May and July this year. I’m also booked in for a Gunyah Residency in August, so 2022 is looking like my year of residencies. Right now, I feel like I’m on fire as a writer … thanks to Create NSW for helping make that happen!