2025 Copyright Agency First Nations Fellowship Announcement
We’re pleased to announce the recipients of the 2025 Copyright Agency First Nations Fellowship.
Thanks to the support of the Copyright Agency’s Cultural Fund this year, we were able to expand the number of fellowships on offer from six to twelve and include an additional fellowship week. This program has always been open to writers of all genres but the new expansion has allowed us to broaden our focus to include more non-fiction work and emerging writers.
The selected writers cover a broad range of projects, from a children’s book about a Koori boy and his quest to save his school crush from a mischievous reality hopping rogue, to a verse novel that explores the complexity of relations between German Lutheran missionaries and the Australian Indigenous peoples, from a non-fiction book tracking the evolution, rise and fall of an Aboriginal Aussie rules football club, to a relatable and heartwarming romantic comedy about connection to Country, loved ones, and yourself.
Congratulations to these writers, as well as the two writers who assessors noted as Highly Commended - Maya Hodge and Rhianna Patrick.
Sharlene Allsopp was born on unceded Bundjalung Country into the Olive mob. She has been published in Griffith Review, Portside Review, and Aniko Press, among others. Her debut novel The Great Undoing, released with Ultimo Press, won the QLD Literary Awards Fiction Book of the Year 2024. She is currently studying for her Masters in Creative Writing at UQ and developing her next novel. Sharlene lives in Meanjin/Brisbane with her family and beloved doggo—Morty.
Alison J Barton is a widely published Wiradjuri poet whose work has appeared in Best of Australian Poems and been recognised in numerous prizes. In 2023, she was the inaugural winner of the University of Cambridge First Nations Writer-in-Residence Fellowship. Her first full-length collection of poetry, Not Telling, was published by Puncher and Wattmann. Alison lives on Wurundjeri Country.
Skye Cusack is a Dulgubarra-Yidinji and Indonesian writer, journalist and comedian living in Rubibi (Broome). Skye shares stories that make you laugh, cry, and call your therapist. Common themes in her writing include mental health, fatphobia, existential Blak crises, and people generally making fools of themselves. Her work was shortlisted for the 2024 black&write! Indigenous Writing Fellowships and received the 2025 Elevate Fund. She is currently developing a YA manuscript with Magabala Books.
Eugenia Flynn is a Larrakia, Tiwi, Chinese Malaysian and Muslim writer, creative and researcher. Her creative practice explores narratives of truth, grief, and devastation, interwoven with explorations of race and gender. Eugenia’s essays, short stories and poems appear in Hello Keanu! A Poetry Anthology, IndigenousX, Peril, Meanjin, The Lifted Brow, and #MeToo: Stories From the Australian Movement, and her text work has been exhibited in Waqt al-tagheer: Time of Change at ACE Open, Enough خلص Khalas: Contemporary Australian Muslim Artists at UNSW Galleries, and SOULfury at Bendigo Art Gallery. She has published essays for arts institutions and publications such as ACMI, MCA, the Print Council of Australia, fine print, Art + Australia, and Newcastle Art Gallery. Eugenia is Vice Chancellor’s Indigenous Postdoctoral Fellow in Writing and Publishing at the School of Media and Communication, RMIT University.
Fletcher Glover is a Saibai Koedal clan man of Saibai island in the Torres Straits. Although born in Canberra and raised in Wollongong away from his culture he has fought to reconnect with his family and Indigenous culture in the Torres Straits. Fletcher is a student of Griffith university and formally Monash University both studying for a bachelor of arts majoring in film studies and minoring in creative writing. He has added to his studies by working on various semi professional film sets around Cairns as a DOP, grip and head of sound for a film that was nominated for an AACTA award. As well as this during his university studies he has written and directed around thirty of his own short films. Nine of these were recently shown at an art exhibition in Cairns at Northsite gallery. He has also attended several miscellaneous educational filmmaking workshops and seminars through Screen Queensland and AFTRS.
Samia Goudie is a Queer Bundjalung woman. She was born on Ngunnawal-Ngunawal and Ngambri country where she now lives and writes. Her writing reflects her love of country, her lived experiences, and speaks to historical injustices, and current social and political issues. She has been published widely, in journals, anthologies and online publications. Samia has had multi media /word /installations and exhibitions of visual art and poetry at various locations including the Wollongong gallery, M16 gallery Canberra, ‘new media ‘Territoires’ lab of arts and media, University of Paris. She has also performed at a number of venues and festivals nationally and internationally as well as lecturing and giving key notes in her various roles in health and in the arts.
Sonya Holowell is a Dharawal and Inuk artist rendering voice and literature. For over a decade Sonya’s expansive vocal practice has woven avante-garde world premieres with electro-acoustic experiments with medieval chant and spontaneous long-form composition. She explores the plural self in its network of relations, and how vocalities can wound hegemonies. She enjoys bringing this mantle to collaboration with others, including as consultant, board director, and panelist.
Natalie Ironfield (she/her) is Dharug person with family connections to the Buruburongal and Warmuli Clans. Natalie lives on Wurundjeri Country and is a Research Fellow within the Centre for Indigenous Futures. Natalie is currently working on a monograph that examines the ways in which universities function as ongoing sites of racial colonial violence, with a particular focus on the discipline of criminology.
Amanda Lott is a proud Bigambul woman who endeavours to explore identity and culture in her stories. She writes brooding and morally grey characters in gritty and gothic settings, and her work was shortlisted for the Queensland Writer’s Centre Publishable Program in 2024.
Darren Moncrieff is a Wadjarri and Yingaarda-Tharrgarri man from his jarndis — grandparents. That means he is Yamaji. He was born in Boorloo-Perth and grew up entirely with his mother’s family in Kuwinyardu-Carnarvon in WA’s north-west. He is a longtime sportswriter and has written about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander issues and extensively on Indigenous sport since the late 1990s. He has worked as a sports reporter-editor at Yamaji News in 1997, a sports editor at Koori Mail, and a sports reporter at National Indigenous Times and for Torres News in the Torres Strait. His first book, Redtails in the Sunset–the untold story of the Central Australian Football Club will be published in September 2025.
Beau Windon is a neurodivergent writer of Wiradjuri heritage that flirts with all genres of creative writing. He was shortlisted in three categories for the 2022 Lord Mayor’s Creative Writing Awards: winning the Self-Told Stories by Writers Living with Disability category and coming runner-up for Indigenous Life Stories. In 2023, Beau was a winner of Griffith Review’s Emerging Voices competition and in 2024 he was a finalist for the Writers Prize in the Melbourne Prize for Literature. He is currently undertaking his PhD in the aesthetic form of neurodivergent literary memoir. You can read his work at www.beauwindon.com
Edith Wright is of Bardi Jawi descent. She is a teacher with over thirty years experience in two education sectors. In 2018 Edith retired from a diverse career in education which included classroom teacher, Principal at Wangkatjungka Remote Community School and District Aboriginal Education Manager. In 2000 her first book Full Circle, a focus on her family history, was published by Fremantle Arts Centre Press WA. In 2022 her first children's book Charlie’s Swim was published by Magabala Books in time to commemorate the 80 anniversary of the Japanese attack on Broome WA. Her focus has shifted from literacy to literature. As a Director on the board of Magabala Books she is well placed to ensure First Nation’s children see their culture reflected in children's literature. She is hopeful the growing numbers of First Nations authors, illustrators and storytellers engaged in truth telling through their books will be a game changer for readers.
