Bernard Cohen

The love I feel for you, it's beyond my control.

I love you, Thomas.

I've always loved you.

Well, it's a workshop for young people.

So I work with school-aged children from kindergarten to year 12.

I run regular after-school programs for them and I go into many, many schools and do quite a bit of teacher professional development in the area of creative writing.

And since 2006, I think I've taught over 80,000 young people.

Usually I start by improvising some kind of story around the subject matter, and the kids very quickly let me know whether they think that it's a very fine story or not so fine.

Real-time feedback.

That's right, absolutely real-time editing, idea by idea.

I have a theme by the term, so they're all on a journey this term, and...

This week, all the young people from right across those age ranges are sending their characters to impossible places.

They're swimming across volcanoes and walking across the moon with no breathing gear and transforming themselves into all kinds of weird creatures.

Yes, varying degrees of rawness, but it's just, it's really fabulous just to see a room full of ideas like that and giving kids the licence to get their imaginations onto the page.

That would be brilliant.

Many of my students are Chinese background.

And although the stereotype is of hot-housed young Chinese students, the parents who send their kids to me are really clear that they want their kids to develop their creativity and imagination.

Well, thank you to the bookshelf.

Well, I've been interested in examining the way that people's sense of themselves and their own power rubs against each other and how they cope, given just how immersive the information that's put on us is as we move through the world.

So I think that most of the stories in it touch on that.