2025 Writer’s Space Online Fellowship Announcement
We’re pleased to announce the recipients of this year’s Writer’s Space Online Fellowship, running 1 - 21 September 2025. The fellowship offers writers facilitated professional networking opportunities, as well as one-on-one mentorship with Varuna writing consultant Mary Anne Butler and author Fiona Wright.
We’re excited this year to be partnering with Accessible Arts, who will deliver a 90-minute ‘Creating an Access Rider’ workshop with Michelle Teear and Madeleine Stewart, and the fellowship recipients will also enjoy intimate Q&As with UQP Publisher Aviva Tuffield, award-winning poet and creative writing teacher, Andy Jackson and award-winning author, Veronica Gorrie.
This program is made possible through the Australian Government Department of Social Services.
Beth Atkinson-Quinton is a broadcaster, audio producer, writer, and mum based on the unceded lands of the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung people of the Kulin Nation. Their work spans live radio, narrative audio, journalism, and creative non-fiction, guided by an interest in the politics of personal storytelling. She has been published across ABC, SBS, The Guardian, The Wheeler Centre, and more, and is a co-founder of Broadwave, a community-focused podcast network. Beth is the co-producer of Tender: Roia Atmar, recognized by the Walkley Foundation Our Watch Award for Excellence in Reporting on Violence Against Women, and most recently a producer of The Palestine Laboratory.
Alison Evans is an award-winning author, most recently of Euphoria Kids. They are based on Wurundjeri Land. You can find more of their work at alisonwritesthings.com
Martina Kontos is an emerging writer from South Australia who won the Plaza Poetry Prize (20 lines) 2025. She has also been commended in the Hippocrates Prize for Poetry and Medicine, and shortlisted for the Bridport Poetry Prize and the ACU Prize for Poetry, among others. She has poetry, fiction and creative nonfiction published in Open Minds Quarterly, Voiceworks, and Please See Me, and is working towards her first poetry collection and a novel. Martina was also recently a shortlist judge in the NSW Poetry Prize. You can find her online at www.martinakontos.com.
William Uy Vu Le is profoundly d/Deaf and an experienced writer, poet and occasional performer across film, television, theatre, print, literature and online content. William founded an all-inclusive casting agency committed to ethnically diverse, disabled and LGBTQIA+ talent with life partner Michael Turkic. In 2014-2015, William was Don’t DIS my ABILITY Ambassador for NSW Government Family & Community Services. In 2016, William proudly narrated with his mother and grandmother (famous TV chef/food sculpture artist in Vietnam) in William Yang's "Who Speaks for Me?” alongside two other Asian families. A year later, he contributed to the 2017 Australian Marriage Equality Campaign with Bà. In 2021-2022, William was a successful resident of Australia Council's "Future Leaders Program," and in 2023, he completed the five-month intensive Australian Progress’s "Autumn National Fellowship". William has been regularly featured in the media as disability advocate, including more recently Next Sense and the ABC.
R. Angela O’Brien is a Tasmanian poet and writer of speculative literary fiction. She has a PhD in unconscious learning and degrees in psychology, fine art, and mathematics. Angela has had work placed or shortlisted in national or international literary competitions. Her writing has appeared in The Phare; Epiphany; Abyss and Apex; and ACEIII, an anthology of short fiction from Australian emerging writers. At home, her garden is frequented by small kangaroos called pademelons and she looks out across a saltmarsh where she can sometimes see eagles hunting.
Frances Olivia’s work has appeared in journals and anthologies in Australia, the US and the UK. She holds a PhD in philosophy from the University of Sydney, and she is currently completing a PhD in creative writing at UTS.
Congratulations to the six writers listed above, as well as the writers marked Highly Commended: Christina Gidas, Aimee Knight, Laura Pettenuzzo, Tyswan Slater and Cedar Whelan.
