“Write clear and hard about what hurts.”

When we see our experiences and feelings reflected in art, it creates powerful human connections that can be life changing.

Artists have an essential role creating the bold and ambitious ideas that inspire and bring us together as communities.

But creating art can be daunting.

Artists need support – not just to practise their profession, but to have time and space to create works that truly express what they want to share.

This is the “artistic rut” that writer Holden Sheppard – part of the 2023 Artist Fund cohort – found himself in as he struggled to get published; frustrated that the stories he was telling weren’t connecting.

“The spark for me that really kicked off my work that got published was seeing a quote in about 2017 by Ernest Hemingway that said, ‘write hard and clear about what hurts.’ And that for me was the click; that was the moment I realised what I had to do,” he said.

Following Hemingway’s advice, Sheppard made a list of everything that hurt.

He had grown up in what he said was “a fairly repressed way,” in the regional WA city of Geraldton amongst a Catholic, Sicilian-Australian family.

When Sheppard was a teenager, he realised he was gay - but also that revealing his true identity could be dangerous.

He quickly saw these experiences and feelings needed to be on the page – all of them.

“That’s what I tried to bring into my novel writing, where okay, I have been conditioned to feel shame for all kinds of things that are really normal for humans to feel. What I am going to do now is stick up a middle finger to that shame and just rock up on the page and say everything is allowed,” Sheppard said.

The list sparked Sheppard’s debut novel, Invisible Boys, which explores the lives of a group of gay teens growing up in Geraldton, with each main character reflecting Sheppard’s experiences.

“Zeke, who is the geek or the nerd. Charlie the punk, and Hammer, the footy jock.”

Invisible Boys became an instant bestseller when it was published by Fremantle Press in 2019, and Sheppard’s writing was widely acclaimed for its unflinching depiction of the discrimination the LGBTQI community can face.

But readers also connected to how Sheppard celebrates the love and friendship that blooms when people embrace their true selves.

“I think a lot of us carry a lot of trauma and a lot of shame from when we were coming to terms with ourselves when we were young people and it doesn’t just vanish when you become an adult, so a lot of people read my work and feel seen and feel like they matter or that they’re okay, and can release a bit of their shame. I’m grateful that’s what art can do, and I hope these books can continue to do that,” he said.

Spurred on by Invisible Boys’ success, Sheppard kept writing and published his second novel The Brink (Text Publishing), with a third novel King of Dirt (Pantera Press) also set for publication.

All the while the idea for a sequel to Invisible Boys was burning in his imagination, but Sheppard struggled to find the time to write the story he really wanted to tell.

“I had been working as a labourer at a timber yard and then as a labourer for a brickie. Being a mid-career artist, people do assume that you’re sorted. It’s seen as though you get published and you’re done, you’re on the ladder. But now you have to climb it.”

Everything changed when Sheppard applied to the Minderoo Foundation Artist Fund, a program established in 2020 to help mid-career artists pursue a new artistic project that will further develop their career and artistic practice.

He was selected to receive a $25,000 grant from the Artist Fund in 2023 to develop the sequel to Invisible Boys, and he devoted himself full time to the project.

“What I’ve done with the (Invisible Boys) sequel is revisit those boys when they are young men. At the core of the story is the relationship between gay men and masculinity, the relationship between gay men and football, specifically Aussie Rules, I’m a big footy fan. My characters play it. What I wanted to do was do the deep dive,” he said.

With time to focus solely on his artistic practice, Sheppard found that while writing “clear and hard about what hurts” was still vital, new inspiration began to emerge.

“There were real time instances of homophobia in the AFL while I was writing this book, so how do I respond to all of that as an artist? Having the Artist Fund grant gave me the time to put something together that could comprehensively respond to all of it,” he said.

As Sheppard completed the manuscript for the Invisible Boys sequel with Artist Fund support, another project was coming to fruition – the streaming TV series of his debut novel was being shot on location in his hometown of Geraldton.

And in late 2024, Sheppard’s Artist Fund project was selected for the $50,000 Minderoo Foundation Artist Fund Award, granted to one member of each year’s Artist Fund cohort who best leveraged their time in the program to innovate, collaborate and broaden their practice and make a meaningful contribution to the arts sector.

Minderoo founder Nicola Forrest AO said Sheppard was a deserving choice from a competitive field of high-quality artists.

“Holden Sheppard’s writing is raw, unflinching and powerful, and has connected deeply with so many people across Australia and internationally. The Minderoo Foundation Artist Fund gives artists the opportunity to explore new ideas and develop their skills, and I’m delighted to present Holden with the Minderoo Artist Prize so he can continue to accelerate what is already an exciting career,” she said. The Artist Fund Award has supported visual artist Nathan Beard to pursue internationally exhibited projects and dancer and choreographer Tara Gower as she establishes an Indigenous dance studio in Broome.

With the Award, Sheppard is now focused on bringing the Invisible Boys sequel to print and pursuing a full-time writing practise to tackle the next stories he wants to tell, where “everything is allowed.”

“I would say to anyone who is an emerging artist or a mid-career artist, but also anyone who’s thinking about being an artist, do it. If it makes you happy making art, then do it. I always just want to tell people that if you’re from a background where people say no you can’t, yes you can, because I did,” he said.