We arrange and pay for acclaimed authors to be writers-in-residence in state schools across the country.
We aim to celebrate and foster creativity and literacy in young people. We're cheerleaders for books, stories, reading and writing. We've seen how creative writing can build students' self-esteem and self-confidence.
We help the students publish their work in magazines and anthologies, and arrange "open house" events at which the students can read their stories aloud to friends, families and teachers.
In September 2009, we hope to have twenty residencies under way at schools across the country.
First Story is a very exciting idea. Having been a teacher myself, I know how writing - real writing, not the artificial exercises produced for tests and examinations - can liberate and strengthen young people's sense of themselves as almost nothing else can.
Philip Pullman, author of His Dark Materials.
