Prestigious Arts NT Varuna Writing Fellowships have been awarded to nine talented and emerging writers from the Northern Territory whose work explores a diverse array of topics from feminism and poverty to satire and interdimensional portals.
The Northern Territory Government partners with the Eleanor Dark Foundation to provide each recipient with an in-house or virtual residency program, through an annual funding of $16,800.
Varuna is renowned as Australia's premier centre for fostering writing development, for writers undertaking the in-house program. It provides an opportunity for writers and illustrators at all levels, across a wide range of literary forms, to focus on and progress their creative projects.
Located in the Blue Mountains, NSW, recipients will have access to a private writing studio and mentoring support.
The successful in-house residency recipients include Sophie Collins for her novel White Coat Witch, which explores feminism and misogyny in medicine, Anne Schmidt for her debut novel, Inland Sea, an auto-fiction about death and strength in dealing with other peoples' grief, and Kyla St Jaye for The Opposite of Abandonment, a contemporary literary memoir about the cycles of family violence, poverty and power.
A further 6 writers have been awarded a virtual residency which offers one-on-one sessions with writing consultants and professional networking opportunities. They include:
Renee McBryde for Hysteria a novel that follows the lives of three women and their tightly woven friendships in the middle of outback Australia.A'mhara McKey for A Shadow in the Water a novel about a retired athlete who uncovers the hidden journals of an infamous bushranger and learns there are some who will do anything to keep his secrets buried forever.Shele Parker Black for A Comet's Two Tails a high octone adoption mystery and redemptive love letter for her family.Sarah Reuben for I Trust Your Answer is Correct a dark satirical theatre script that uses the façade of Australian 90s game shows to interrogate the weaponisation of the pain, suffering and death in war.Myshka Spalding for Poems for Lost Girls a collection of poems exploring the transition from childhood into adulthood through the female gaze.Ciella Williams for Life is Swift a play about two Darwin teenagers that are sucked through an interdimensional portal into Taylor Swift's version of the universe.
In addition, Sally Bothroyd was highly commended by the assessment panel for her manuscript Cursed Stones.
Since 2016, the program has now supported 52 Northern Territory writers through 58 fellowships, with successful publishing outcomes for most of the participants.
