Melbourne City of Literature announces new travel fund recipients

The latest recipients of the Melbourne City of Literature Travel Fund have been announced.

First launched in 2014, the travel fund provides grants of up to $3000 to help people working in Victoria’s literary sector enhance their work through travel.

The 22 successful applicants are:

• Melinda Allan: librarian exploring children’s services in libraries in Canada and the US
• Emilie Baker: poet travelling to London to work with youth slam organisation Apples and Snakes
• Kate Callingham: arts manager touring Australia’s top end to visit Indigenous and Torres Strait Islander writing organisations
• Jo Case: literary programmer visiting New Zealand Festival Writers Week in Wellington to enhance Australian engagement with NZ
• Emilie Collyer: playwright attending production of her play The Good Girl in New York and researching career sustainability
• Sam Cooney: publisher attending two independent magazine conferences: U Symposium (Singapore) and Facing Pages (the Netherlands)
• Fayen d’Evie: arts book publisher travelling to the US for a mentorship with Georgina Kleege, professor of creative writing at UC Berkeley
• Alexis Drevikovsky: arts manager investigating cultural approaches to programming, promotion and building partnerships in Granada
• Elizabeth Flux: editor researching interviews and attending the Hong Kong International Film Festival
• Jessica Friedmann: writer travelling to Lisbon, Portugal, to attend the 2016 Disquiet International Literary Program  
• Christine Gordon: events manager attending the London Book Fair and visit independent book shops in London and Paris to gather ideas 
• Simmone Howell: writer travelling to San Francisco to study environmental life writing at the Djerassi Centre
• Emily Johns: library officer attending the ALSC National Institute 2016 in Charlotte, North Carolina, US
• Brodie Lancaster: writer conducting interviews and meeting with fellow critics and publishers at SXSW in Austin, Texas
• Michele Lee: playwright undertaking a one-month residency in June 2016 with The Playwrights’ Centre, Minneapolis, US
• Alister McKeich: academic developing skills in the Pitjantjatjara Indigenous language of the Western Desert
• Beth Driscoll: academic visiting Edinburgh and Norwich to extend research into the public impact of Cities of Literature
• Lefa Singleton Norton: arts manager attending the Out of the Binders Conference and meeting with VIDA and Canadian Women in the Literary Arts
• Gemma Steele: librarian travelling to Adelaide to visit the South Australian Museum Library and attend the ALIA 2016 Conference
• Lilit Thwaites: translator travelling to Spain to work on translations and source new translations, publishers and writers for Melbourne
• Sam Twyford-Moore: literary programmer travelling to Indonesia to consult with ASEAN festival on digital programming

• Adele Walsh: literary programmer exploring diversity and best practice in US young adult and romance programming.

The applications were assessed by the Big Issue deputy editor Melissa Cranenburgh, arts journalist Richard Watts and author Lili Wilkinson.

This is the final round of recipients for the travel fund. To see the list of first-round recipients, click here.