Khuslen Batmandakh often felt like an outsider.
Leaving her home country at just two years old, she struggled to speak and read in her native tongue.
But as she embarked on a year-long journey to capture a difficult moment in Mongolian history, she deeply understood her culture and heritage.
"The person I was before and the person I am after - I feel very different," Ms Batmandakh said.
"I learnt a lot about Mongolia's history and the literature at the time."
The Merewether High School graduate weaved stories from her family of everyday life together with in-depth research to bring to life the story of one poet and his political persecution.
Written as her major work for the Higher School Certificate Extension English 2 subject, Ms Batmandakh's short story, "Is revolution a fast gun that looks back?" was selected as one of the top submissions in the state.
She was one of 18 students chosen out of 1400 be featured in the 2025 HSC Young Writers Showcase, effectively making her a published author.
"It was validation that someone else also thought your writing was good enough to be showcased," she said.
"Being published means people who never knew about this poet or this era of history, know his name or know his story."
When starting her project she knew she wanted to write about Mongolia, and highlight a part of history that wasn't just Genghis Khan.
Her dad introduced her to Mongolian poet Ryenchin Choinom, who was persecuted for being critical of the communist state in the 1960s.
"He had to read it in Mongolian to me and then explained the meaning in English, I was blown away by how much meaning and significance was packed into his poetry," she said.
Based on his real-life imprisonment, her story fictitiously explores his life before, during and after prison through a non-linear tale.
"I wanted to mirror how a political prisoner's psyche is fractured because of torture and suffering," she said.
"I wanted the audience to reflect and consider how repression and violence occurs and continues today, and I wanted to talk about dissent and how we view it."
In her research, Ms Batmandakh learnt that Mongolia had been under communist rule from 1924 to 1990, and while it brought a lot of progress to the country including literacy and healthcare, culture was also erased.
She read that tens of thousands of people, mainly intellectuals and Buddhist monks, were believed to have been killed during the so-called Stalin-Choibalsan massacres of the 1930s.
"It really isn't known outside Mongolia," she said.
"My broader goal was to metafictively explore the role of art or poetry as a witness to history," she said.
With the help of her dad, she translated several of Choinom's poems from Mongolian to English, which she included excerpts of throughout the story.
"I also wanted readers to read his poetry for themselves," she said.
As part of her research, she sent questions to her grandparents who still live in Mongolia.
She wanted to authentically portray the memories of childhood in the country and what clothes people wore and what houses they lived in.
Her mum's parents lived the city and had mostly embraced the communist living while her dad's parents were more critical of the former government.
She also drew on her childhood memories of visiting her grandparents during the summer months.
"I remember playing in my grandparents' attic and playing in the garden and the happiness of that, I wanted to put that in a little scene," she said.
Ms Batmandakh had always enjoyed creative writing and the freedom it gave to explore a different world.
Now studying at the Australian National University in Canberra she was hoping to still pursue her writing through a double degree in arts and law.
