Fellowships

 

ASAL / CA Writers’ Fellowships

ASAL in collaboration with Copyright Agency CA is delighted to announce the writers’ fellowships for 2026. 

 

2026 Fellows

 

Emily Tsokos Purtill is a Western Australian writer and former lawyer of Greek heritage. Her home is Boorloo (Perth) and she has also lived in the UK, Vancouver, Paris and New York. Her short fiction has been published in Griffith Review, Westerly and Science Write Now. She is a 2024 winner of the Griffith Review Emerging Voices Competition for her essay, Know Thyself. Emily’s debut multi-generational Greek-Australian novel Matia (UWA Publishing, 2024) is the winner of the 2025 Western Australian Premier’s Book Award for an Emerging Writer.

 

Shannon Benton is a writer and emerging novelist based in regional New South Wales. Her work explores memory, place and creative identity, often drawing on Australian literary history and landscape. Shannon is developing her novel Fragmented, a work of literary fiction that engages with themes of memory, authorship and myth, set between Victoria’s Mulberry Hill and Hanging Rock. Shannon’s writing has been recognised through a range of emerging writer opportunities. She was shortlisted for the Newcastle Writers Festival Fresh Ink Emerging Writers Prize and for The Best Australian Yarn, and her work has been published in Mona Magazine. She is currently undertaking advanced study through the Faber Writing Academy’s Writing a Novel program. Alongside her creative practice, Shannon writes extensively on regional arts, culture and community life. She also works in allied health and aged care, specialising in report writing and narrative-based documentation, a skillset that informs her interest in life writing, storytelling and memory. Shannon is committed to amplifying regional voices and contributing to Australia’s literary culture.

Dungog, is located on the traditional lands of the Gringai clan, a sub-group of the Worimi and Wonnarua Nations.
 
 

 

About the ASAL / CA Writers’ Fellowships

There are two fellowships offered in 2026, each of three months duration.

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. 

 

The fellowships include: 

  • A $3,000 honorarium
  • Flights, accommodation, and registration at the ASAL annual conference in July 2026
  • 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 July 2026
  • 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 contact ASAL’s secretariat ([email protected]) by 31 January 2026. 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, Instagram).

 

 

Previous ASAL / CA Writers’ Fellowship recipients

 

2025 Fellows

 

         

Izzy Roberts-Orr is a poet, writer, and performance maker based on Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung Country in Regional Victoria. Her debut poetry collection, Raw Salt (Vagabond Press, 2024), was shortlisted for the Colorado Prize for Poetry. A recipient of the BR Whiting Residency (Rome, 2026) and Varuna’s Pitch Me! Fellowship (2024), she also works as Creative Producer at Red Room Poetry.

 

 

Eda Gunaydin is a Turkish-Australian essayist and researcher whose writing explores class, Western Sydney, intergenerational trauma and diaspora. She has been published widely in publications including Meanjin, HEAT, Sydney Review of Books, Cordite, and others. Her debut essay collection Root & Branch: Essays on Inheritance won the 2023 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Non-Fiction, and was shortlisted for the 2023 Australian Book Industry Awards’ Matt Richell Award for New Writer of the Year. She lives on Wangal land. edagunaydin.com

 

2023 Fellows

 

 

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.