2026 Writer’s Space Online Fellowship
We are pleased to announce the six recipients of the 2026 Writer’s Space Online Fellowship. This program is open to writers with disability and/or are D/deaf, and offers mentorship, Q&As with authors Cynthia Banham and David Stavanger, and the opportunity for peer feedback.
Congratulations to Juliet Rowe, Katerina Bryant, Krystle Herdy, Rae White, Tayla Richardson and Tyswan Slater on being selected as this year’s recipients.
Assessors remarked on high calibre of submissions this year and five additional writers were acknowledged as Highly Commended: Anna Bartlett, Grace Hall, Helen Ho, Maja Chodorowski and Samia Goudie.
We look forward to the six recipients participating in the online program with facilitators Mary Anne Butler and Fiona Wright from 11-31 May 2026.
ABOUT THE RECIPIENTS
Juliet Miranda Rowe
Juliet Miranda Rowe is a cross-disciplinary artist, writer and educator based in Naarm. Best known for bold yet tender illustration and animation, Rowe is interested in exploring memory, belonging and status. Outside of studio practice Rowe is a sessional teacher at COLLARTS and RMIT University, as well as an Arts Mentor through Arts Access Victoria.
Katerina Bryant
Katerina Bryant is a writer based on Kaurna land. Her first book, Hysteria: A Memoir of Illness, Strength and Women’s Stories Throughout History (NewSouth), was published in 2020. She is currently working on a novel about chess and care work.
Krystle Herdy
Krystle Herdy (she/her) is a queer, disabled poet and editor based on the unceded lands of the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung people of the Kulin Nation. In 2025, she won the June Shenfield National Poetry Award. Her first poetry collection, Mythology Mechanic, was published while she was still an undergraduate, and her work has appeared in Australian and international journals.
Currently at work on her next collection, Krystle sees poetry as a way to explore and untangle life’s contradictions—an art form that makes room for precision and ambiguity, structure and chaos, all at once.
Rae White
Rae White is the author of poetry collections Milk Teeth (UQP 2018) and Exactly As I Am (UQP 2022), and the picture book All the Colours of the Rainbow (Lothian Children’s Books 2025), with illustrations by Sha’an d’Anthes. They won the Thomas Shapcott Poetry Prize, and have been shortlisted for the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards, Queensland Literary Awards, and Victorian Premier's Literary Awards. Rae is the Creative Director and Founder of Uplift Poetry, a community poetry initiative; the Founding Editor of #EnbyLife, a journal for non-binary and gender diverse creatives; and a co-host on the 4ZZZ radio show Tranzmission.
Tayla Richardson
Tayla is a multidisciplinary artist, poet and disability advocate living on Bunurong land. She creates to connect, untangling perceptions of ambiguous loss, hope and impermanence, drawing from her lived experience with a rare neuromuscular condition. Her work has featured in local and international film festivals, online with RUSSH magazine, Writers Victoria, Emerging Writer’s Festival, the Grieve Project and Poetry D’Amour, amongst others. She is a Mother Tongue ‘Rising Voices’ Inaugural Fellow and is currently writing an interdisciplinary poetry memoir.
Tyswan Slater
Tyswan Slater is a Blue Mountains writer and artist whose work explores themes of belonging, isolation, and identity. She writes short stories, middle-grade novels, graphic novel scripts, and adult novels. She has won several short-story competitions, her adult stories have been published in anthologies, and her humorous children’s story was published in the 2024 School Magazine. She has been selected, or shortlisted for, various mentorships, residencies, and fellowships. In 2023, she was the recipient of a WestWords/Varuna emerging writers’ residency to develop an adult speculative fiction manuscript.
