Did I say “handwritten”? Well, what a coincidence, for Stevens, a former Katherine Susannah Prichard Writers’ Centre Young Writer in Residence and NSW Co-Ambassador for National Young Writers’ Month, is masterminding a unique event called “Handwritten Live: Scissors Paper Pen” at the National Library of Australia, where the mighty manuscript exhibition is in full swing.

It’s the brainchild of three amigos – Stevens, who with last year’s ACT National Young Writers Ambassador Duncan Felton and musician James Fahy, recently formed “Scissors Paper Pen” with a view to changing the face of letters, arts and debate among young people.

“We’re about creating a sense of community for everyone,” says Stevens, who lived in the ACT until she was eight and is now returning to do an MA at the ANU and is mad about Canberra. It’s not a platform for the three, but is “about raising the big issues… We are building an aorta for pumping creative blood of all walks through this veiny symmetry… We are using scissors, paper, and a pen,” they say.

See what I mean about words?

With a grant from Express Media, administered by “Voiceworks” literary magazine, to encourage writers under 25, they kicked off late last year with nights full of music, storytelling, movement, debate, discussion and art at Canberra’s Phoenix Bar and Lonsdale Street Roasters. “It went down a treat.”

Now they’ve gone up-market to the National Library after Stevens met NLA staffers Kathryn Favelle and Fiona Hooton and found them keen to get young writers and readers into the library and for something that connected into “Handwritten”.

“Handwritten Live” will front a cool line-up, with pre-show music,  sell-out Canberra singers “Women of Notes”, and Melbourne’s formidable “Women of Letters”, flying in for the night.

A panel chaired by Canberra’s “You Are Here” festival co-director Yolande Norris, will see cartoonist David Pope, Women of Letters’ co-curator Marieke Hardy, Amnesty International’s Kathy Richards and National Library curator Susannah Helman arguing out the role of the pen.

There’s no doubt where Stevens stands on that – “handwritten flow all over the page… ideas don’t always flow in word document format.” She was thrilled by “Handwritten”– “you can almost feel the breath of tangible history in the pages of medieval writing… I hope we don’t lose the written word soon.”“Handwritten Live: Scissors Paper Pen”, National Library of Australia Theatre, 6pm, February 16. Free event, but bookings essential to 6262 1271.