2025 Ann Moyal Non-fiction Fellowship Recipients Announced
The Ann Moyal Non-fiction Fellowship is a prestigious three-week fellowship that has been running annually since 2023, established with a bequest from the late Dr Ann Moyal AM, FAHA, a leading Australian historian of science, technology and telecommunications, as well as a biographer and author. Dr Ann Moyal was an alumna of Varuna, and wanted to provide opportunities for other writers and scholars to enjoy the support and collegiality of a Varuna residency.
In 2025, we received 70 applications, and assessors commented on the incredibly high standard of work being submitted for the program.
We are pleased to announce that the recipients of this year’s Ann Moyal Non-Fiction Fellowship are Nicole Hodgson, Sandra Hogan and Lilian Pearce. We look forward to welcoming them for a three-week residency from 29 September - 20 October this year.
Four writers were deemed Highly Commended: Neha Kale, Kathryn Millard, Michelle Scott Tucker and Julienne van Loon.
Thank you to everyone who submitted, and to our assessors Tom Griffiths, Mark McKenna and Kate Cole-Adams.
Nicole Hodgson has nearly completed a PhD in Environmental Humanities at University of Western Australia, working on an ecobiography of Sarah Brooks, a 19th century botanical collector in the remote south-east of Western Australia. Nicole is also a part-time lecturer in sustainability at Murdoch University with a long career in environmental and sustainability policy. Her creative non-fiction and short fiction has been published in Life Writing, Westerly, Landscapes: the Journal of the International Centre for Landscape and Language, Overland (online) and Newcastle Short Story Award Anthology.
Sandra Hogan is the author of With My Little Eye, the best-selling true story about a family of Cold War spies, published by Allen&Unwin in 2021. She is a journalist and feature writer, with an interest in families and the way they keep secrets. Her first book explored the way an Australian espionage couple raised their children as spies and taught them how to keep national secrets. In her new book, she is researching secrets kept from children after the Holocaust, and the way children can know things without being told.
Lilian Pearce is an award-winning interdisciplinary scholar, working across fields of environmental history, geography and politics. Lil conducts collaborative, place-based research and is passionate about the role of archives and storytelling in the pursuit of social and environmental justice. Her work appears widely, including in The Conversation, Griffith Review and Aeon, and she serves on the Editorial Advisory Board for Human & Nature Press Books. Lil is a Post-doctoral Research Fellow with the Alfred Deakin Institute at Deakin University and lives on Taungurung Country with her family. Her first book is due out in 2026 through Upswell Publishing, supported by the P. F. Rowland Manuscript Development Grant.