Janene Carey hopes to take on the enjoyable yet daunting challenge of collating the stories behind the region’s greatest writers.

The new project will be in collaboration with the New England Writer’s Centre, and aims to showcase writers who have portrayed the region and its people, as well as writers nurtured here who have achieved fame elsewhere.

“It’s not going to be a scholarly book, but it’s for a general audience,” Carey said. 

“So there will be anecdotes and snippets of [interviews] and hopefully [it] will be written in a colourful, engaging way.”

For now, Carey has a great deal of research to do, and hopes her grant applications will be successful in funding the project.

“I’d really like to interview Shirley Walker,” she said.

“She worked at UNE for a long time and she was actually one of the first people to do their Phd on Australian literature.”

Carey’s newest project follows an exciting development of her own literary career, with her book A Hospital Bed At Home attracting praise from author Helen Garner. 

“She liked the writing, which I was obviously stoked about,” she said.

Garner’s comments followed a week later, however Carey did have to trim the quote down to fit it on the front cover.