Since emigrating from Lebanon to Western Sydney when she was 12 years old, Noura Hijazi has always found writing to be an outlet for her thoughts and feelings, and a way of adjusting to a new environment in Australia.
Story Factory provided the opportunity for Noura to not only develop her love for writing, but also to publish her own book.
“Writing helped me a lot in moving countries, and surviving all the challenges that come with that,” Noura says.
“Writing was always a tool that was there to help me and guide me through life. Through Story Factory, I realised I could write and publish a book, that writing could be something serious. It felt very empowering.”
Noura participated in Story Factory’s Year of the Novella program during her final year of high school in 2018, and published her first book, Voracity, at the end of that year.
“I was doing the HSC at the time, so it was interesting juggling that and writing a book,” she says.
“Thinking about the future was daunting, but doing the Year of the Novella felt grounding. The workshops were so fun, a place where you got to explore your ideas. It felt like there was nothing you couldn’t do; you could let your imagination run wild and it just was an amazing experience.”
Several years after taking part in Story Factory’s Year of the Novella, Noura has graduated from university with a degree in animation.
She also has worked as an emerging writer and mentor on one of Story Factory’s recent projects with other young people in Western Sydney.
“It was so cool to see the young writers and what they have to offer, and quite inspiring to see that even though they’re in high school they’re able to create amazing stories,” Noura says.
“It felt like a cycle. I loved having that opportunity myself with Story Factory – it helped me find confidence in my writing and in my voice – and I felt so grateful to be able to give that experience to someone else.”
The excerpt below is from a new novel Noura is writing about a young girl who has just finished her HSC and has lost her best friend.
Excerpt from A letter from me to you:
I gaze up at satellites from the bank of the Georges River. Pink and blue hues that shimmer against a lit sky. There’s not a single cloud, and yet I can sense the gloom of the atmosphere as it takes its final breaths for the day. My eyes settle back down to the ground and the river’s sways. The water is dancing to a swifter current than the rhythm it followed just two hours ago when I had just arrived.
Yet I continue to stare, with no company except for the sound of squalling crows and water just barely kissing the muddy sides of the bank. That and the pinched thread of a memory. I replay it in my mind, hoping to somehow rewind time and let it play in the present. But I am no time traveller, for all I had to do is let time pass by, further and further away. So, I settle with the mortality of time, and for the bliss of at least having remnants of the past wrapped in my mind like a gift for safekeeping.
It is a memory of you. The only thing I have left.
