This year the Stella Prize is launching Girls Write Up – a one-day wordfest for teenagers in Melbourne and Sydney in June that ‘teaches empowerment through writing and sharing stories’.

We asked some children’s and young adult authors whether reading and writing had played a role in building their own confidence as young people. Here are their responses.

“When I was in primary school I somehow summoned the bravery to enter our local library’s writing competition. I was a regular visitor at the library – every Saturday morning I would go with my family and borrow the maximum ten books for the week. Reading provided such escapist pleasure that I was inspired to write my own stories, hoping to discover myself in my own work. I couldn’t believe it when I got a letter (it was the olden days) telling me I’d won second prize in the 12 and under category!

My proud parents and I put on our smart clothes and attended the awards ceremony… at which point my dad found out that my prize-winning story ‘My House… without Dad’ imagined an alternate reality where he wasn’t living with us. But he was still really proud of me. And it was that early affirmation that kept me going, even in my difficult twenties, when I received plenty of rejections as an aspiring writer.”

– Leanne Hall, author of Iris and the Tiger

‘As a young person, writing and reading taught me my most empowering lesson: your imagination is the most important thing you have. It’s innate, it’s free and it’s all yours. Never let anyone stop you from creating and sharing your stories.’

– Christopher Currie, author of Clancy of the Undertow

‘Reading was always an escape for me: if I’d had a bad day at school or an argument at home, I could just open up a book, fall into a different world and emerge hours later with a different perspective on things. Reading a good book was such a magical journey that I can’t remember a time when I didn’t want to write as well, to create my own worlds for other kids to escape into. And I hope that one day these young readers will be inspired by their favourite books to create new worlds for their readers. Reading and writing creates a universe of infinite worlds where anything is possible.’

– HJ Harper, author of the Star League series

‘I was an awkwardly tall Asian kid during the 1980s and a massive introvert. While mainstream books never seemed to feature anyone remotely like me or anyone I knew (ditto the telly), fantasy and science fiction novels were vital reading because they brought home that things like skin colour, height or gender (even species!) were completely irrelevant to whether a person could have adventures. Writing stories enabled me to write the “real” of my world, into the fictional worlds I was constantly presented with. My advice to young writers? If you see a gap in the story write into it: it’s what I do all the time.’

– Rebecca Lim, author of Afterlight

‘I have always read. I’m not sure that reading particularly contributed to my confidence (I didn’t have much) but reading certainly gave me exposure to a broader range of lives than those to which I was otherwise exposed. Writing, however, was a way to try to make sense of the world; I wrote furious and furiously. One day I will pull out those journals and discover that they are even worse than I imagined, but they served a purpose, I suppose: they kickstarted a career.’

– Kim Kane, author of the Ginger Green series

‘My early childhood was pretty chaotic, five primary schools in as many years, and through all that change, reading was the constant. At the time, stories were my escape, a sweet relief, but somehow I also came to understand that I was the narrator of my own story, and there’s a quiet power in that.’

– Kirsty Eagar, author of Summer Skin