Creating a love of writing in our young authors' club

The dream of seeing a child settle in with a notebook and write for an hour is shared by parents and librarians everywhere. At Booker T. Washington Learning Center in East Harlem, that dream takes shape in a small after-school circle where nine- to eleven-year-olds swap stories and argue about which word deserves the strongest verb. The Young Authors' Club has been quietly reshaping how members see themselves as writers since 2017.

The point is not to produce polished mini-novels, although a few children have done exactly that. It is to give young people a regular, low-pressure space where sentences can wobble and a spelling slip is something to fix together rather than a reason to be embarrassed. Sessions run twice a week alongside the centre's STEM projects, Girls on the Run and Aspen Youth Experience excursions.

Anyone who has watched a reluctant reader fold into a beanbag with a Mem Fox paperback knows that writing and reading are two sides of the same act of attention. The Young Authors' Club leans into that connection, and the model travels well for community programs from an outside-school-hours service in regional New South Wales to a Saturday hub in suburban Melbourne.

A safe room where bad first drafts are welcome

The first rule on the wall reads, in large marker letters, "First drafts are allowed to be terrible." Children who arrive certain that writing is only for the naturally gifted discover the only expectation is to put words on paper and bring them back. Mentors sit beside the writers, modelling how to cross something out and try again.

The room feels less like a classroom than a bookshop corner, with battered copies of Andy Griffiths' Treehouse books, a tin of sharpened pencils and a clipboard for tracking mentors. In Australian terms, the vibe is closer to a Saturday session at a suburban library than a formal lesson, the kind of space where a kid can kick off their shoes, slump into a beanbag and call the lead mentor by their first name.

That informality is by design. The centre has watched what happens when children sense their writing will be graded on the spot: they freeze. By stripping the room of red-pen symbolism and replacing it with a culture of "no worries, we'll fix it together Thursday arvo," the program makes space for voices still finding their feet. Within a term, most members start writing what actually interests them.

Reading as fuel, not homework

Reading sits at the heart of the club's calendar, and not in a dutiful way. Each session opens with a short read-aloud chosen by a member, followed by a quick book chat in which the children say what they noticed, what confused them, or what they would change. The format borrows from routines common in Australian primary schools.

The shared texts are deliberately varied. A group might compare a chapter from Morris Gleitzman's series with a Mem Fox picture book, then move to a nonfiction piece about a southern corroboree frog or a poem by an emerging Australian writer. The rule is that a book, an article, a graphic novel or a poem all count. When a member is stuck, the mentor nudges them back into a recent read-aloud to ask which character, image or line could be borrowed, twisted or paid homage to in their own piece.

This habit of feeding reading into writing does something subtle. Children begin to notice the mechanics behind stories they already love, how a writer paces a reveal, where an author plants a hint, why a chapter ending feels satisfying. They start lifting those moves into their own notebooks, and several have produced pieces that owe a clear debt to the way Jackie French handles weather and landscape.

Mentors who write in front of the kids

A defining feature of the Young Authors' Club is that the adults in the room are writers themselves, and they make that visible. Mentors include published essayists, a former newspaper reporter who now freelances, and teachers taking a year to focus on their own projects. Each mentor sits with their own notebook open, working alongside the children for at least twenty minutes of every session.

The choice to model writing in real time echoes residencies run by the Australia Council and state education departments, and readers will recognise the idea from programs attached to figures such as Andy Griffiths and the 13-Storey Treehouse creative workshops. Mentors at the Harlem centre do exactly the same, narrating their stuck points out loud and showing how a paragraph can be salvaged with a single new verb.

Sitting opposite an adult who groans, scratches their head and still finishes a scene in twenty minutes gives a child permission to struggle in public. Mentors track which children light up around which kinds of writing, and quietly steer each toward projects that suit them, whether a comic strip, a recipe-memoir or a proper fantasy trilogy.

Voices from the club

The strongest evidence for the program's impact lives inside the writing itself, but the centre also collects short reflections after each term. A Year 6 member wrote that she "used to think writing was just for school, now it's for me." A parent mentioned her son had started leaving sticky notes around the kitchen with invented superheroes, "which is both funny and slightly alarming, but I'll take it."

Mentors keep their own log of small breakthroughs. One noted that a boy who had refused to read aloud all year finally read his own poem to the circle in week seven, then asked to read it again the following week. Another recorded that a girl who arrived speaking little English was, by her second term, dictating fantastical stories to an older club member who transcribed them, a kind of buddy-writing no syllabus had planned for.

These stories also travel through the centre's wider network. Children who finish the Young Authors' Club often step into the Aspen Youth Experience summer intensive, where drafted chapters are polished for an end-of-summer reading. A handful have gone on to write for the centre's monthly newsletter, edit pieces for the on-site library, or contribute to a separate books section on the organisation's website. The pipeline is informal, but it is real.

How families can nurture young writers at home

Parents and carers who want to build on a program like this do not need to recreate it at the kitchen table. A few small habits, repeated often, do most of the heavy lifting. Carve out a writing nook with decent light, a notebook the child picks out, and a sharp pencil, then agree on a regular slot, even if it is only twenty minutes on a Sunday arvo, when the whole family writes side by side without screens.

Keep reading and writing braided together. Snippets from Mem Fox, Aaron Blabey or a current favourite series can become jumping-off points for "what if" stories at bedtime, and the local library card is a free passport into a far wider range of voices than any single shelf at home. In Australia, where many families live hours from a bookshop and rely on mobile libraries, that card is more useful than almost any other piece of writing equipment a child can own.

Treat a child's early drafts as evidence that writing is happening, not as a polished product. Read what they offer to share, ask one curious question about a character or a choice, and resist the urge to correct a spelling they cared about enough to attempt. The habit of being read with care is what turns a notebook scribbler into a writer who keeps going back to the page.

If a child in your life is ready to find their voice on the page, the Young Authors' Club at Booker T. Washington Learning Center is currently enrolling new members for the spring term, with scholarships available so cost is never a barrier. Visit the centre's website or reach out through the contact page to sign up a young writer, refer a family, or support the program today.