2025: A year of reflection when creativity offered hope

2025 has been a year of creativity and reflection. We launched and published Light and Shadow anthology, featuring 43 writers and poets and we  experienced vibrance, talent and new connections as we travelled across Victoria to literary events in Echuca, Clunes, Daylesford and Bendigo. 

In the early days of Minds Shine Bright the lingering impacts of the COVID pandemic was the dark cloud that hung over us but in 2025 the worries have shifted to the impacts of geo-political tensions and wars. For me personally, some minor health issues crept in and made me realise that it’s important to make the most of every moment and to do the things that you love and that matter while you can.

I’ve recently returned from a trip out west to the tiny town of Great Western. This place is full of stories from Michael the legendary Post Office cat who rubbed up against me to say ‘Hello’ as I explored Main Street with one pub, one cafe, one general store and a chemist to the locals with their hospitality, stories and connections. The Country Fire Authority fire siren rang out loud and clear one night, like an evacuation signal, startling me. Fortunately the fire was a small one at one of the Stowell supermarkets quickly contained. The CFA is 100% volunteer run and one of our Minds Shine Bright published writers Francois Thornton-Smith (Confidence 2022 and Light and Shadow 2025) is an active member in her local community. Huge trucks roar past and the shopfronts are covered in grape vines. We wandered through the underground drives at Seppelt Winery learning about the colourful history of sparkling wine, which has been made in the region since 1865. We visited the nearby Grampians to experience some natural beauty. The image for this month’s post is of the magnificent Grampians, central to Western VIctoria’s culture and history, recovering from the bushfires of late 2024 and early 2025 and home to the dreaming stories of the Djab Wurrung and Jardwadjali people for over 20,000 years.

Looking forward to 2026, the winners of the Places Writing Competition will be announced In March, and then our two Places anthologies will start to take shape to be launched later in the year. I can’t wait to see all the Places stories and poems come together, bringing new places to life and I look forward to putting writers’ names to the stories and poems we are currently reading blind.

Writer in Focus – Heather Robinson

Image by photographer: Carmen Bunting

Heather Robinson is a writer and researcher specialising in the cultural history of the twentieth century. She is also a creative producer with thirty years of experience across the Australian Galleries, Libraries, Archives, Museums (GLAM) sector and public service. She completed a PhD at Flinders University, exploring the creative industries policy impacts on cultural institutions and their communities. She is an avid reader, Darwinian gardener, and passionate motorcyclist. 

I first met Heather when staying in Daylesford for the Words in Winter Festival. Heather and John were most excellent hosts and I was delighted to meet someone who was championing libraries. Heather’s most recent publication Beyond the Books: Culture, value, and why libraries matter is based on her thesis and uses the State Library of South Australia as a case study. 

Interview with author Heather Robinson, questions by Amanda Scotney 

What inspired you to explore the culture, value and significance of libraries in your PHD and in your book?

It was almost by accident and came from a rather uninspiring source – grant acquittal forms. Having delivered a range of festivals and cultural experiences, I’d noticed that the conversation around reporting and acquittal processes had shifted to prioritising the capturing numbers – bums on seats, tourism numbers, sponsorship raised – rather than audience responses or critical feedback. Both sets of information are important, and I was curious about what this shift meant in terms of policy decisions and long-term planning. I was invited to join a research team at Flinders University who had received an Australian Research Council grant to examine what cultural value meant today. I chose to conduct a cultural value analysis of the State Library of South Australia because I’d had experience working in the State Library of Victoria, but also as a researcher, I have a great respect and admiration for the work and expertise of librarians. They are unsung heroes in our communities – keeping us connected and servicing our information needs.

Why was it important to seek the views of people who visit and use the Library?

Perceptions of value are very subjective – a library or theatre experience means different things to different people over the course of their lifetimes, depending on age, past experience, economic circumstances, cultural backgrounds. One of my favourite theorists, Ben Walmsley, suggested that if we are to truly understand the value of culture, we have to hear it from the people experiencing it in their own terms. I followed that advice and I’m so glad I did – the richness of experience and the meanings libraries generate across individuals and communities ground the raw data and give it meaning, showing value in a way that numbers cannot. 

 What in your findings, if anything, surprised you the most?

There were a couple of standout findings. The first was the depth of feeling people have for “their” library. There is a real sense of not only ownership, but of belonging. The services provided by a library have a deep impact on people’s lives, in terms of how they see themselves as part of a community, but also as a means of self-actualisation. They may come with a query about their interests or research, but leave having in some way found or explored an aspect of themselves. 

As a researcher though, I was most surprised by how the State Library of South Australia connected many users with the history of the state. The tales of the library’s founding run parallel with the founding of the colony and for many, this historical narrative is replayed or reinforced each time they visit. A visit to the library becomes a lived heritage experience and has a huge impact on their sense of cultural identity, building up over time.

When I read Beyond the Books I found it really joyous. There was layer upon layer of meaning and connection built up as you gathered different perspectives, and brought in the importance of time and history, reference materials as sources of truth and connection, free access to knowledge and learning, the provision of a safe haven, a sense that the library formed part of the vibe of Adelaide, and the unique community that is built around every library. In our times when everything is fast and transient, how do we better champion and protect these places of quiet solidity for now and for future generations?

I’m so pleased you enjoyed it! There is indeed much to celebrate in the voices of the public and perhaps my favourite is the depth of love many of us still nurture for the quiet spaces within our communities, where we can connect and share and learn from each other, or just simply be still for a moment. It’s why I wrote the book for the public – to give back and celebrate.

One of my interview subjects saw engaging with the library as a civic duty. Unless we engage with them – either online or in person or perhaps both – we cannot complain when they are subject to funding cuts or closed altogether. WE must demonstrate their role and their worth.

Libraries remain sanctuaries for many members of our communities, the location of programs and events connecting strangers with common interests and needs, building and reinforcing what makes our way of life so precious. Libraries are the opposite of the fast and transient world, the world of tech bros and instant gratification. Libraries provide an alternative perspective on the world, one far more inclusive and nuanced that mirrors the diversity and complexity of the modern human experience. To protect our libraries, the best things we can do it is use them. And as we’ve just seen in relation to the State Library of Victoria, if the time comes, we must also stand up for them and preserve those opportunities for the future.

Places Writing Competition Update

Competition judging is on track and progressing well. We will be and contacting writers with an update on their entries by early March 2026 and we will be announcing the winners at an online celebration later in the month.

’m delighted to announce that talented Canadian writer Karin Doucette has joined our judging panel and is busy reading short stories.

Karin Doucette has published short fiction and creative nonfiction, and written stage plays. She has competed in story and play competitions and was a Finalist for UK’s 2023 Page Turners Award. She has read for Scottish Arts Trust’s Edinburgh Flash Fiction and Short Story competitions; and for Canada’s CNFC/Humber Literary Awards, CNFC/Fiddlehead Nonfiction Competition, and Whistler Independent Book Awards (multiple genres). A native of Prince Edward Island, Karin has travelled every continent and lived/worked on four of them, including Australia.

Welcome Karin! It’s very exciting to have an international judging panel in place for the Minds Shine Bright Places Writing Competition. Our judging panel for Places includes Jennifer Harrison, Karin Doucette and Amanda Scotney that’s me).

A notable collection of stories and poems

Since 2021 Minds Shine Bright has published four competition writing anthologies and one community anthology. Our strict blind judging policy ensures a diversity of writing from both local and international writers at different stages of life and career. 

The  fictional stories and poems in our Confidence series provide an examination of our inner selves and the way we see the world. In the Seasons series  writers explore and weave stories drawing on elements of the external world and for our upcoming Places  series we will create a map of connected stories and poems about different places.

Minds Shine Bright anthologies are available  online from the Minds Shine Bright bookshop, or you can order them into your local bookshop or library.

Buying a Minds Shine Bright anthology helps us to offer a generous prize pool when we run our annual writing competitions, and each book contains literary treasures and new talent to discover. Each anthology tells its own story with many voices. A Minds Shine Bright anthology is something precious to inspire you on your writing or reading journey.