2026 Whitlam Essay Residency Recipients
We are delighted to announce the six recipients of the 2026 Whitlam Essay Residency.
This residency was open to essayists at various stages of their career, who are either Varuna alumni or WSU students, staff or alumni. In honouring former Australian Prime Minister Gough Whitlam’s legacy, this residency callout was focused on essays that make research more relevant and accessible to the broader public, or that take a creative approach to exploring social or political concerns.
On behalf of Varuna and The Whitlam Institute, we’d like to congratulate Sam Carmody, Louise Carter, Farz Edraki, Isabelle Li, Gemma Parker and Yves Rees on being selected.
One writer out of the six recipients was also chosen for the Margaret Whitlam Fellowship, an award proudly sponsored by Catherine Dovey, daughter of Gough and Margaret Whitlam, which recognises an essayist whose work advances women’s autonomy, strengthens community wellbeing through attention to social policy, celebrates cultural curiosity, or encourages work on creative responses to social issues. The recipient of this inaugural Fellowship is Isabelle Li.
Assessors remarked on the very competitive selection of submissions this year and six additional writers were acknowledged as Highly Commended: Tyler Heesh, Helena Kadmos, Jane Rawson, Carolynne Gordon, Sue Swinburne and Melanie Myers.
We look forward to welcoming the six recipients to the Whitlam Prime Ministerial home in Cabramatta in September-October this year.
Sam Carmody
Sam Carmody is an award-winning author and journalist. His debut novel The Windy Season was shortlisted for The Australian/Vogel’s Literary Award and won the Readings Prize for New Australian Fiction in 2017. His short fiction and longform essay journalism has appeared in various places, including The Griffith Review, ABC Online and in recent collections by Fremantle Press and Hachette. In 2022 he was shortlisted for a Walkey Award for Excellence in Journalism for his longform investigative story for ABC Radio National’s Background Briefing, “The Ghosts Are Not Silent”. He lives and writes in Kinjarling/Albany, Western Australia.
Louise Carter
Louise Carter is a Sydney-based poet and writer whose work has appeared in HEAT, Best Australian Poems (2012 & 2015), Cordite, Meanjin, Westerly and other publications. She holds a PhD in Australian postmodern romantic poetry from Western Sydney University and her first poetry collection Golden Repair was published by Giramondo in 2023. Louise’s current project Aerial is a sequence of essays that explores themes of embodiment and female strength, inspired by her journey of learning pole dancing.
Farz Edraki
Farz Edraki is an Iranian-Australian writer, editor and the host of the Queer Renegades podcast (SBS) and Days Like These (ABC). Her writing has been published in The Age, Debris Magazine, the Sydney Review of Books, among others. She's worked as a commissioning digital editor and TV producer at the ABC, on programs including The School That Tried to End Racism, The House and Tonightly. She has appeared at the Sydney Writers' Festival, BBC Radio 3’s Contains Strong Language Festival, and is a current PhD candidate in testimonial technique and fiction at Macquarie University.
Isabelle Li
Isabelle Li is a Chinese Australian writer and translator. She has published in various anthologies and literary journals including The Best Australian Stories. Her collection of short stories A Chinese Affair was published by Margaret River Press in 2016. Her prose translations have appeared in Sydney Review of Books and her poetry translations in Mascara, and World Literature and Works in China. Her Chinese translation of Sebastian Barry’s novel The Secret Scripture was published by Zhejiang Literature & Art Publishing House. She received her Doctor of Creative Arts from Western Sydney University.
Gemma Parker
Gemma Parker is an award-winning poet and essayist, and author of the creative-critical memoir The Mother is Restless and She Doesn’t Know Why (Scribner, 2026). After many years abroad she now lives on Kaurna Yerta with her family, where she teaches Creative Writing at Adelaide University.
Yves Rees
Dr Yves Rees (they/them) is an award-winning writer and historian based on unceded Wurundjeri land. They are a Senior Lecturer in History at La Trobe University, the co-host of Archive Fever history podcast, and author of Travelling to Tomorrow: the modern women who sparked Australia’s romance with America (NewSouth, 2024) and All About Yves: Notes from a Transition (Allen & Unwin, 2021). They are also co-editor of Nothing to Hide: Voices of Trans and Gender Diverse Australia (Allen & Unwin, 2022) and co-editor of History Australia, journal of the Australian Historical Association. Rees is the founding editor of new literary journal Lantana.
