Green image of many school desks and chairs floating

Wheeler Centre Hot Desk Fellowship

I am the very very proud recipient of a Wheeler Centre Hot Desk Fellowship for 2020!

The Hot Desk Fellowships are supported by the Readings Foundation. Myself, along with 20 other fellows, receive a stipend and workspace. While my workspace is currently in Meanjin due to COVID-19, I’m looking forward to collaborating in an online writing space until I’m perhaps able to work in the Wheeler Centre building.

Who are my fellow Fellowship recipients?

Mama Alto, Alex Creece, Monikka Eliah (playwright fellow), Lou Garcia-Dolnik, Veronica Heritage-Gorrie, Natasha Hertanto, Ruby Hillsmith, Georgia Kartas, Kim Lam, Nellie Le Beau, Leah Muddle, Rashmi Patel, Allee Richards, Ariel Ries, Lobna Rouhani, Vince Ruston, Darlene Silva Soberano, Diane Vu, Dženana Vucic, Panda Wong.

What’s my project about?

I will be working on the redrafting of Welcome Home, a Young Adult speculative fiction verse novel. This story focuses on the lives of two non-binary transgender teenagers, who have a strong and intimate platonic friendship. Welcome Home examines concepts of safe spaces through the lens of an abandoned haunted house (in a fictional Queensland location), which provides a home for young people whose gender identities lead to their exclusion in other spaces. This novel is in a first draft stage, and requires redrafting and formatting into verse – the majority of which I will complete during my Hot Desk Fellowship.

**Read more at the Wheeler Centre website**

Picture of the front cover of a book titled 'the bright and the cold' selected poems of Anne Elder

Anne Elder Award announcement

This year I had the pleasure of judging the Anne Elder Award alongside Gig Ryan and Marcella Polain. Congratulations to the joint winners:

  • Cham Zhi Yi for ‘blur by the’ (Subbed In)
  • Gareth Sion Jenkins for ‘Recipes For The Disaster’ (5 Islands Press)

And to the commended authors:

  • ‘The Empty Show’ by Alice Allan (Rabbit Poets Series)
  • ‘The Things the Mind Sees Happen’ by Belinda Rule (Slow Loris series / Puncher & Wattmann)

**For more info and to read the full judges’ statements, visit the Australian Poetry website**