NBCS Young Writer included in HSC Showcase

NBCS is delighted to announce that 2023 HSC graduate Millie Piggott’s English Extension Two major work has been selected for inclusion in the 2023 HSC Young Writers Showcase.

Millie’s short story, The girl who built the world with a hammer, features 18-year-old Donna navigating her life in a futuristic Sydney. The city is divided in half, each side representing a different political ideology, but both sides have diverged so far that the world has become an echo chamber of hatred.

Millie said writing the story was a long process.

“When I began the course, I thought I’d have to do something very academic and philosophical,” Millie said. “My teacher stopped me and said, ‘Write about what worries you’. The thing that really worries me today is the lack of nuance.”

Over the course of the year, Millie created 16 drafts and rewrote the story four times. “It was so painful. Every single time I’d finish a draft I’d hand it in, and hear, ‘this is great but also, change it’.”

Millie’s fiction joins 18 other outstanding 2023 major works to be published in an anthology. On 22 May she’ll join the other students selected for the Showcase and be celebrated as part of the 2024 Sydney Writers’ Festival.

“I am so proud and really happy about it. I genuinely did not expect this at all,” she said.

In 2024 Millie is studying English at the University of Melbourne.  She reads widely, citing favourite authors as Arthur Miller, Henry Miller and Patrick Rothfuss, and plans to pursue writing in the future. Her hope is to eventually remake her story into a novel. “I’d love to continue with these characters,” she said.

“I also see myself writing political and social commentary [in the future].”