Zhan receives 2024 Kat Muscat Fellowship
Express Media and the Kat Muscat Fellowship Committee have announced that Xiaole Zhan is the recipient of the 2024 Kat Muscat Fellowship.
Selected from a shortlist of six announced last month, Zhan is a Chinese-New Zealand writer and composer based in Naarm (Melbourne), with an interest in writing on ‘the collision between language and music to explore themes of culture, the body and mental health’.
They said of their plans for the fellowship: ‘I hope to write towards Kat Muscat’s values of defiance, feminism and empathy in my first collection of essays exploring growing up in a mixed Pākehā-Chinese family in Aotearoa and themes of intercultural family bonds, racism, chronic illness, depression, gender, and joy as resistance. The fellowship will allow me to work closely with celebrated Australian writers Alice Pung and Maria Tumarkin—both of whom I deeply admire as writers and as people.’
Elizabeth Flux, chair of the Kat Muscat Custodial Committee, said the fellowship received a record number of submissions this year. ‘We were lucky to have so many strong projects put before us, and we are excited to support Zhan as they work on their essay collection “Think an Empty Room, Moonly with Phoneglow”,’ said Flux.
Zhan’s essay of the same title was also the winner of the 2023 Kill Your Darlings Creative Nonfiction Essay Prize.
The 2024 Kat Muscat Fellowship offers professional development up to the value of $5000 for an editorial project or work of writing by a young person aged 16–30.
First awarded in 2016, the Kat Muscat Fellowship was named in honour of the late Voiceworks editor, aiming to continue Muscat’s legacy ‘and further develop the future of defiant and empathic young Australian feminists’. The recipient is selected by the custodial committee of the Kat Muscat Legacy Projects, which includes members of Express Media’s board and staff, the Muscat family and appointed community members.
Last year’s fellowship recipient was Taylor Mitchell. More information about the fellowship is available on the Express Media website.
Category: Awards Local news News
