2026 International Lamplight Online Fellowship (Ireland) Announcement

We are pleased to announce the selected writers for the 2026 International Lamplight Online Fellowship - Ireland, a two-week online fellowship for published fiction writers to enjoy the combined mentorship and support of Varuna the National Writers’ House and Irish Writers Centre.

Congratulations to Australian writers Christine Evans, Kai Ash, Kirsten Tranter and Penni Russon and Irish writers Byddi Lee, Fiona McKay, Niamh Boyce and Patrick Chapman.

The online program will run from 15-26 June 2026 and includes a writers conversation with Mary Anne Butler and Conor Kostick, online Q&A sessions with best-selling Australian writer Hannah Kent and award-winning Irish writer Mike McCormack.

Read Irish Writers Centre’s announcement

Varuna is grateful to the Creative Australia International Engagement funding for support on this project.

AUSTRALIAN WRITERS

Christine Evans

Australian-American writer Christine Evans writes plays, fiction and opera libretti. Her novel, Nadia (University of Iowa Press) was published in 2023, and her novel in verse, Cloudless (UWA Publishing), in 2015. She’s currently working on River & Maude, a new novel, set in a flooded future beset by feral AI and bio-drones.

Christine’s libretto was one of three finalists for a 2025 Australian Writers Guild (AWGIE) Award. Three Marys premiered at the Sydney Opera House in 2023, as part of the UnWrapped program showcasing independent artists. The Washington National Opera commissioned and produced Mud Girl, her opera with composer Omar Najmi, at the Kennedy Center (DC) and the Kaufman Center (NYC) in 2025.

She is the recipient of the Jane Chambers Playwriting Award, the Rella Lossy Playwrights Award, multiple DC Council on the Arts Artist Fellowships and of Varuna, MacDowell, Yaddo, Bogliasco, Bellagio and Virginia Center for the Creative Arts Fellowships.

Christine holds an MFA and Ph.D. from Brown University, was a Briggs-Copeland Lecturer on English at Harvard (2007-2012) and serves as Professor of Performing Arts at Georgetown.

Kai Ash

Kai Ash was raised in Yuggera country (Brisbane region, Queensland), where he grew up amid bush-covered ranges. Once he was old enough, he set off to explore the world: Czechia, Palestine, Israel, New Zealand, Spain and Scotland. He studied gender, language, law and psychology before returning home to his ranges. Kai’s work has been shortlisted in The Ampersand Prize, Adaptable, Lane Cove Literary Awards and Melbourne Lord Mayor’s Creative Writing Awards, and he was a mentee in the ASA/CA Award Mentorship Program. *The Boy Maeve* is his first published novel.

Kirsten Tranter

Kirsten Tranter is an internationally acclaimed author, editor, and critic. Her novels include *Hold*, longlisted for the Miles Franklin Award and the Voss Literary Award, and *The Legacy*, shortlisted for the ALS Gold Medal and the ABIA literary fiction award, and longlisted for the Miles Franklin award. She has mentored authors and taught creative writing and literary studies around the world at the University of California, Berkeley, the University of Copenhagen, the University of Technology, Sydney, and the Faber Academy., Kirste is a co-founder of the Stella Prize.

Penni Russon

Penni Russon is the author of several award-winning and critically acclaimed novels for young people. She's taught creative writing at universities in Melbourne and Sydney since 2007. In July 2026 she will commence a three year ARC DECRA research fellowship on slow narrative and the ecology of attention in children's literature written by adults and children's own creative practice. She is cultivating her own 'slow' methods for writing, an approach that values relational and durational composition, playing with the boundaries of poetry and prose, myth and history, self-making and place-making, and human and more-than-human in form and content.

IRISH WRITERS

Byddi Lee

Byddi Lee is the author of *Barren* (shortlisted for the Carousel Aware Prize 2025), *The Rejuvenation Trilogy*, and *March to November*. She writes short fiction, plays and screenplays and was selected for BBC Writers’ Room Voices 2023. Her play, *Toxic Relationships,* has been performed by Armagh Theatre Group (ATG) in venues across Ireland between 2023 and 2026. She co-founded Flash Fiction Armagh, is supported by the Arts Council NI and holds professional membership of the Irish Writers Centre.

Fiona McKay

Fiona McKay is the author of the novellas-in-flash, The Lives of the Dead (Ad Hoc Fiction, 2025) and The Top Road (Ad Hoc Fiction, 2023), and the flash fiction collection Drawn and Quartered (Alien Buddha Press, 2023). She was a SmokeLong Quarterly Emerging Writer Fellow in 2023. Her flash fiction is in The Storms, New Flash Fiction Review, Pithead Chapel, The Forge, The Four Faced Liar, trampset, Fractured Lit and others. Her work is included in Best Small Fictions 2024. She lives in Dublin, Ireland.