Fellowships

We are pleased to announce a pilot program of Copyright Agency-funded Writers’ Fellowships with the Association for the Study of Australian Literature (ASAL). ASAL aims to promote the study, discussion and creation of Australian writing, and these fellowships intend to strengthen connections between writers, readers, students, and scholars of Australian literature.

ASAL in collaboration with Copyright Agency CA is delighted to announce the recipients of the writers’ fellowships for 2023. 

There are two fellowships offered in 2023, each of three months duration.

Warmest congratulations to the recipients, Luisa Mitchell and Fiona Murphy.

Luisa Mitchell is a Broome-born author with Whadjuk Ballardong Nyungar and European heritage, living and working as an arts producer in Boorloo (Perth). She has short stories published in both print and online, including Fremantle Press anthology Kimberley Stories (2012), international journal Portside Review, local West Australian youth magazines Grok and Pulch, and Curtin University’s alumni publication, Curtin Commons. Her writing portfolio includes fiction short stories, non-fiction essays, poetry, and screenplays that explore themes of love, magic, family trauma, colonisation, politics, and the funny side of dark situations. In 2020, she was selected as an Inner-City Writer-in-Residence at Centre for Stories, where she developed a feature screenplay excerpt that was later published in the anthology Under the Paving Stones, The Beach (2022). In 2022, she graduated from the Australian Writer’s Guild’s First Break WA screenwriting program. Luisa also performs spoken word poetry and has shared her work at WA Poets and Cockburn Wetland Centre’s events in Boorloo. She is passionate about uplifting and empowering other First Nations artists and runs a First Nations Write Night for mob at Centre for Stories, alongside Ballardong editor Casey Mulder. In her free time, she enjoys going for walks, beach swims in summer, and dancing all-year round.


Fiona Murphy is an award-winning writer and accessibility consultant based in the Blue Mountains, NSW. Her work has appeared in The Guardian, ABC, The Saturday Paper, Griffith Review, The Big Issue, among many other publications. Her debut memoir, The Shape of Sound, explores her experience with deafness and was highly commended in the 2022 Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards. 
 


ABOUT THE FELLOWSHIPS

In 2022-23 we are offering two fellowships, each of three months’ duration. The fellowships include:
 

  • A $3,000 honorarium
  • Flights, accommodation, and registration at the ASAL annual conference in Melbourne in July 2023
  • The opportunity to use ASAL’s social media accounts to raise the profile of your own writing and that of other writers in your state/territory/First Nations country
  • A profile on the ASAL website
  • Publication of a piece of fiction, nonfiction or poetry in JASAL, the Journal of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature
  • A one-year subscription to the Austlit database

 
The responsibilities of the fellowship holders include:
 

  • Engaging with ASAL social media following guidelines from the ASAL executive
  • Speaking at a discussion forum at the ASAL annual conference in Melbourne in July 2023
  • Submitting a piece for publication to JASAL
  • Writing a short report

 
Application Criteria:
 
The applicants must be a published author in one or more of the following: fiction, nonfiction, poetry, drama, children’s/YA. Preference will be given to writers who are living and working in areas outside the Eastern seaboard and/or in non-metropolitan areas. Applications from First Nations writers and writers from diverse backgrounds are warmly encouraged.
 

Application process:
 
Please submit an application form (available upon request)
to ASAL’s secretariat ([email protected]) by 30 November 2022. The selection panel will be recruited from the ASAL Executive.

Your application should include a CV listing your publications and two short statements (400 words each) of how you would use the Fellowship

  • to produce a piece of writing for publication in our journal, JASAL
  • to strengthen connections between writers, readers, students and scholars of Australian literature, using our social media accounts (Facebook, Twitter).