When CQUniversity creative writing student Janene Carey began working as a part-time journalist at her local paper, she never thought that within 5 months her name would be catapulted to the front page of one of Australia's leading dailies.

Then she wrote an article about Armidale's Rebecca James, the impoverished former kitchen salesperson and mother-of-4 whose manuscript for a young adult thriller provoked deals totalling $1.4 million from eager international publishers.

Emerging writer Janene Carey."Soon after I started at the Express, I did a profile piece on Rebecca's sister, Wendy James, who's an award-winning novelist. In October she tipped me off about Rebecca's amazing success, by sending me a link to an article in The Wall Street Journal that called her the next J.K. Rowling."

Janene interviewed Rebecca James and wrote up the rags to riches fairytale for the Armidale Express. Thinking the story had national appeal, she asked her editor to send it along to their sister publication, the Sydney Morning Herald.

 You can read the story here.

 "I was actually in Rockhampton at a postgraduate retreat when the story was due to appear in the weekend edition of the Herald. The paper isn't distributed in Rocky so I had to ring my husband in Armidale to find out if it had been published - and I was flabbergasted when he told me it was the lead story on the front page, with a byline!"

Janene's article was also picked up by other Fairfax papers in Australia and New Zealand, including The Age in Melbourne. The TV show A Current Affair broadcast a segment on Rebecca James several days later.

You can view the A Current Affair program here.

Australia's JK Rowling

Janene is currently writing a creative non-fiction manuscript as part of her PhD thesis at CQUniversity. It's a memoir plus researched mini-biographies portraying what it is like to care for a family member with a terminal illness.

Since becoming a student at CQUniversity under the supervision of Associate Professor Donna Brien, Janene has participated in a number of conferences and workshops to help develop her skills.

She attended a creative non-fiction conference at Newcastle Uni and went to a workshop with author Blake Morrison, whose book about his father had recently been made into a film. Janene presented a paper on the ethics of life writing which later appeared in a top academic journal.

She also spent time on Pumpkin Island, having been selected for the Central Queensland Writers Masterclass, and co-authored a paper about Australian universities' policies on creative writing research degrees, at the AAWP (Australian Association of Writing Programs) annual conference.

On completion of her PhD, Janene hopes to write more creative non-fiction, including freelance feature stories.

If her first reporting efforts are anything to go by, we may be reading more from Janene in years to come.