Varuna announces recipients of 2017 Residency Fellowships

Varuna, the Writers House has announced the recipients of the 2017 Varuna Residency Fellowships.

The writers and their projects are:

The Mick Dark flagship fellowship

• Rebecca Giggs for ‘The Whale in the Room’, ‘a work of lyric, researched nonfiction’ that ‘looks at the changing role of whales in environmental imagination’.

The Eleanor Dark flagship fellowship

• Deborah Kalin for her literary genre novel ‘Salt Wives’.

The Eric Dark flagship fellowship

• Meera Atkinson for her nonfiction manuscript ‘The Exiled Child’, ‘a creative-nonfiction exploration of the ways childhood trauma reverberates over a generation’.

The Dorothy Hewitt flagship fellowship

• Saaro Umar for her collection of poetry ‘fingernails & itch’, about ‘dismantling the mind of a First Gen-Oromo-Australian and how she navigates semi-adulthood in wake of her displacement’.

The Henry Handel Richardson flagship fellowship

• Peggy Frew for ‘Annas’, ‘a collection of linked short stories concerning a family, set on an island off the coast of Victoria’.

Varuna residential fellowships

• Ashleigh Davis for ‘Abide’, ‘a book for children in which animals mysteriously appear every evening to wander amongst cities and suburbs, only to disappear by morning’.
• Emma Quay for ‘Sunbeam Baby’, ‘a picture book for very young children, celebrating the love we feel for our babies’.
• Clint Caward for ‘still, life’, ‘a novel about the death of radio, digital media’s desperation to be “liked” and the digital tsunami we’ll all be engulfed by’.
• Kelly Gardiner for ‘Grace’, ‘a novel of the interwoven lives and voices of Queen Elizabeth I and the pirate Grace O’Malley’.
• Kirsten Krauth for her novel ‘Almost a Mirror’, which asks ‘how do you choose the soundtrack that defines your life, if that’s all you have to leave?’
• Clare Macgown for her novel ‘Something Invisible to Others’, in which ‘young Annie survives the Welsh coal mines of the 1830s’ but ‘to escape for good, she must be bad’.
• Suzanne McCourt for ‘The Year of the Wolf’, ‘a novel about love and loss, identity and obsession, set against a background of war and revolution in Poland and Russia’.
• Kate Mildenhall for her novel ‘Borderless’, in which ‘May’s husband disappears while working on a secret project and she is forced to flee Australia with her two children’.
• Amanda Niehaus for her novel ‘Little Birds’, about a young ornithologist who ‘must learn to control her dark urges’ after ‘a dangerous affair’.
• Susan Paterson for her novel ‘Into the Green Fields’, in which a ‘19th-century painter and sailor must confront a family legacy of grief’ amid ‘the psychological wilderness of life at sea’.
• Anna Snoekstra for her novel ‘Dolls’, in which ‘a desperate reporter thrusts herself into the unnerving case of the appearance of porcelain dolls on doorsteps’.
• Nicole Crowe for her memoir ‘Short Smoke and Lies’, about how ‘every kid wants to fit in but how can you ever hope to do that when you have a mother who keeps a dead bandicoot in the fridge?’.
• Anne So for ‘Second Chance Luck’, ‘an autobiographical novel about family ties, identity and the Chinese-Australian migrant experience’.
• Simmone Howell for her nonfiction work ‘Strange Little Girl’, ‘a YA memoir that explores unconventional role models in literature and popular culture’.
• Julienne van Loon for her nonfiction work ‘Ideas for Living’, a ‘popular philosophy for the thinking woman’.
• Emily Bitto for ‘All the Old Symbols’, ‘a poetry collection that has at its heart a preoccupation with symbolism and its personal and cultural functions’.
• Tricia Dearborn for ‘Autobiochemistry’, ‘a poetry collection that draws on autobiographical material but takes unexpected directions’.
• Laura Kenny for her poetry collection ‘Passages’, which is ‘preoccupied with the places we have been, the places we are going, and all that lies in between’.
• Aden Rolfe for ‘Heavenly Emporium’, ‘a poetry and poetics project about the relationship between objects and systems of classification’.
• Siall Waterbright for her poetry collection ‘Anadi’, ‘written after the death of the poet’s mother who lived for thirteen years with dementia’.
• Laura Elvery for her short-story collection ‘The Elements’, which explores ‘characters on the cusp of something new, whose lives turn on their relationships with objects’.
• Kim Astill for ‘Spider On The Moon’, ‘a dark-yet-hopeful contemporary YA novel (15yrs+) with elements of mystery and wry humour’.
• Clare Atkins for ‘Between Us’, a YA novel ‘about two teenagers falling in love despite the political wilderness between them’.
• Charlotte Callander for her YA novel ‘Sirens’, in which ‘a teenage boy returns to his former hometown for the summer and must confront the truth about his twin brother’s death’.
• Catherine Hainstock for her YA novel ‘Worth It’, in which ‘a 16-year-old BMX rider must decide what’s worth fighting for when other people’s plans put him and his future at risk’.

The Dark and the Hewitt Flagship Fellowships are for three-week residencies, and the Henry Handel Richardson Flagship Fellowship, offered in partnership with the Henry Handel Richardson Society, is for two weeks and includes $1000 to cover travel costs and additional expenses. The residential fellows are for two-week residencies.

Varuna received more than 200 applications for residency fellowships from both published and unpublished writers.

For more information, click here.

Category: Local news