Year 12 Students are currently studying Cate Kennedy’s Like a House on Fire, drawing on her short stories to create their own pieces of imaginative writing.

In an interview, Kennedy offers this insight to short story writers: “You build [the] world as carefully as a builder constructs a room; you get all the framing square and all the dimensions right, to control how the reader’s eye passes over that room, and takes in its details.” The students are taking this on board as they construct their stories. Below are some of the “worlds” they have been constructing through evocative descriptions and imagery: “The sun trickled down, illuminating the soft red glow of the roses, their deep green leaves and stems, covered in prickly thorns in and out of each other in a dark thicket.” “Quiet. Boring. Prude. These words dug at my stomach like bad milk.” “Dew settles on the grass of the oval, visible from the cracked asphalt of the carpark. Early morning people run laps around the slippery grass, as I pick at the raisin toast crumbs under my nail.” “The memories she had of the school library were the most memorable for her, sitting behind the bookshelves on a couch where her and his group of friends would talk about literally anything that’d make them laugh and separate them from the tragedies that were occurring in each of their families’ lives.” #swinburnesenior