Shannon Anima is a Varuna Flagship Fellowship recipient for 2023, a Writers Space Varuna Fellow 2023, and a WestWords Writer-in-Residence 2023. In the past four years, she has also won a WestWords-Varuna Residency, the Dentro la Terra Residency in Italy, and a WestWords Academy place. In this same timeframe, she was shortlisted for the Deborah Cass Award, the Tasmanian Women’s Fiction Prize, and a Mascara Varuna Residency. She was longlisted in 2022 for the Spark Hardie Grant prize. She was recently interviewed on Able Radio as an emerging writer. She has also won the University of Victoria Poetry Prize.

Amy Anshaw-Nye (she/her) is a queer writer and zinester living and working on unceded Darug land in Western Sydney. Her works explore themes of love, transformation, madness, motherhood, and queer identity.

She was a recipient of the 2023 WestWords-Varuna Emerging Writers’ Residency and her work can be read in a variety of publications, including Flash Fiction Magazine and Verandah Journal. She’s also founder of a zine press, where she publishes zines about life, pop culture, and queer love.

Amy is a passionate advocate for queer representation in media. Her debut novel will be Ebb Tide, a sapphic romantic suspense novel set in 1960s Australia. You can find her on Instagram @amyanshawnye and subscribe to her newsletter on Substack. Her website is amyanshawnye.com.

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The highlights of my Academy year were building a wonderful community of writers around me, attending the WestWords-Varuna Residency, and having the opportunity to pitch my manuscript to an agent at the BAD Crime Writing Festival. I’ve learned so much from the seminars and grown confident performing my works on stage through our monthly Academy Live events. I couldn’t recommend the WestWords Academy more.

Nataša Aster-Stater is a writer, poet, and journalist from Western Sydney. She’s an editor for Western Sydney University’s publication W’SUP and is working on a YA fantasy novel, titled “Painted.” Her short story “Captured” was published in Lovesick Zine. She feels honoured to be a 2024 WestWords Academian.

Kate Barrat has completed a BA (Communication Studies) through Newcastle University and a BA Honors in Film Production. She’s worked in the Art Department of Looking for Alibrandi and Dog Watch, along with Production Assistant and Production Coordinator on many TVC’s and TV shows including; Out There for the ABC, Water Rats, All Saints, Red Planet (Warner Bros), Mission Impossible (Additional AD) and for Southern Star on a series called Chains of Love. She moved into casting and worked for several years on many films such as Matrix, War in the Pacific (Spielberg/HBO) and as an extra coordinator on many films and TVC’s before working as a Departmental Coordinator at AFTRS. Kate completed a MA in Screenwriting and have taught film production and other film units to university students. She’s produced and directed a couple of documentaries, one of which Stiletto Girls that won the audience choice awards at the WOW Film Festival. Kate has also been working on writing novels, and has had short stories published on Fixional. She’s about to commence a PHD in film and writing. Most recently her script, The Star Child was selected as best unproduced screenplay at the British Animation Film Festival.

Sharon Baldwin is the founder of Loose Parts Press, an independent publisher of children’s books. Through this imprint she has written and released three picture books and a series of twelve chapter books. She lives in the Blue Mountains where she also teaches drama and art workshops, and is dipping her toes into writing for adults.

Ally Burnham is an AWGIE award-winning screenwriter, NIDA graduate (2016, Masters Writing for Performance), novelist and writer of comics. She is best known for her feature film Unsound (2020), nominated for Best Original Feature at the 2020 AWGIE awards. The film won Best Australia Feature at the 2020 Melbourne Queer Film Festival, Best Fiction Feature Film at the 2020 ATOM Awards, and was nominated for Best Indie Feature at the 2020 AACTA awards. Ally is the lead writer for Metropius; her short film screenplay won Most Outstanding Animation at the 2022 AWGIE Awards.

Writing for television, Ally has collaborated on projects for CJZ, and assisted on projects for Essential Media and Blackfella Films in 2017. In 2016, developing for CJZ, Sweet Jane, was a recipient of Screen Australia’s Gender Matters initiative.

Ally also writes as a novelist. In 2020 she received a residency fellowship from Varuna House, for the development of her fantasy YA manuscript, Majesty. She is a contributing author and editor to the fantasy, sci-fi & horror short story collection The New Mythic, which was nominated for two 2023 Aurealis Awards. She also drops weekly podcast episodes called Prose & Cons; a podcast by emerging writer, for emerging writers. When there is time, she teaches at NIDA Open, training school-aged and adult students in screenwriting for film and television.

For more information visit www.allyburnham.com or follow her @alexandria_burnham

Adam Byatt is a high school English teacher, developing artist, and occasional drummer sifting through the ennui, minutiae and detritus of life and cataloguing them as potential story ideas. He describes his writing as ‘suburban realism’ exploring the stories behind the brick and fibro.

Sarah Carroll is an award winning Pasifika, queer and neurodiverse writer, performer and producer working on Dharug Land (Western Sydney). Sarah strives to champion for underrepresented voices to be heard and create works that uplift and engage audiences in new and exciting ways usually with lots of sparkle and sass.

Sarah Cupitt (pronounced like Que-Pitt) is an ambitious writer interested in working with people with amazing stories to tell. She’s secretly always looking for stellar scoops and tends to ask a lot of questions.

Highly engaged in newsgathering, research, story construction and news writing for delivery over a variety of platforms, from print-based to online, broadcast and social media, she loves adding value to stories with additional story elements.

When Sarah isn’t brainstorming ideas or furiously typing away, you’ll find her reading, designing, or researching her latest obsessions. Psychology, writing ecologies and ancient history, to name a few.

Jelena Curic is the resident diva of the Croatian Community in Sydney, singing most weekends in Croatian, English and Italian. The last 40 years have been spent performing throughout Australia. There were numerous Television performances; Hey Hey It’s Saturday, Midday Show with Kerri Anne, Morning Show with Bert Newton, Club Buggery with HG and Roy, Channel V with Molly Meldrum. Jelena is a 2023 Westwords Alumni participating in readings and being a part of the end of year showcase where she was an MC and organiser. Publications of her short stories can be found in Westwords Bad Western Sydney Anthology, and Living Stories The Other City, where she was one of the regional winners. Her work was also published in 2023 Short Stories Unlimited Leaving Home Anthology and was short-listed for the Born Writers Award 2023.

Blake Curran (he/him) is a queer writer living on Dharawal land, on the southwestern outskirts of Sydney, Australia. He is currently working on A Town Called Cancer, a horror novel set in outback NSW. It deals with themes of queer identity, grief, intergenerational trauma, chronic illness and demonic possession. Blake also regularly contributes reviews to Aurealis Magazine, and has been a judge for the Aurealis Awards twice before. Outside of writing, Blake works in the field of advertising and can often be caught crocheting, cross-stitching or baking in his spare-time. He goes for occasional road trips with his fiancé, and also shares opinions about books, TV shows and movies that no one asked for on his Instagram @blake_curran_writer

Kennedy Estephan was born in North Lebanon but raised and for the most part educated in Beirut. He migrated to Australia in 1987 where he completed his tertiary studies, with his first teaching practicum performed in the Parramatta area. He has been working as a full-time science teacher since 1989. This is pertinent to the manuscript he submitted to the WestWords Accelerator. His manuscript, Whispers, a work of literary fiction, is set in the yard outside the astronomers’ living quarters and span no more than an hour in real-time. The work explores the themes of workaholism after a failed marriage, homophobia, and the dangers of falling in love while on the rebound. Being of Lebanese Maronite descent, Kennedy identifies Parramatta as the cultural centre for his friends, family and community. Much of Kennedy’s writing and research has been conducted at The City of Parramatta Library, and prose performed at the WestWords Centre for Writing in the heart of Parramatta. A WestWords-Varuna Emerging Writers’ Resident in 2023, Kennedy is also a winner and finalist in many short-story competitions, with his work appearing in literary magazines, anthologies, online websites and local community-radio broadcasts. These include ZineWest, WestWords BAD Western Sydney Anthology, The Living Stories The Other City Anthology.

A.D. Feldman is a writer and designer living in lutruwita/Tasmania. Her fiction explores notions of place, politics, history and the secrets of the human heart. Currently she is revising her first novel. When not at her desk she can often be found walking in the hills, muttering to herself.

Mersija Ilic is a an emerging memoir writer based in Campbelltown. Her work explores the issues faced by women when confronted with domestic violence, lack of education, poverty and fear. She believes that the power to survive and to create a better world lies in the sharing of these stories.

Danii Jasmine is a poet/writer who explores the depths of the human condition through the lens of surreal nostalgia, dark humour, drawing blood, pinning butterflies and building shrines to a deeply felt past. 

Christine’s writing follows her career working in mainstream, community, and young people’s theatre.
Trainee and then Resident Director at Nimrod, Sydney, she became Director of Magpie, YPT section of SA’s State Theatre Company. Twice, she was Guest Director with SA’s State Opera. She spent 5 years as Artistic Director/ CEO of Chung Ying Theatre, Hong Kong, before returning to Australia, as AD with Queensland Theatre Company. Her directing career covers over 50 productions. Some works toured Australia and major festivals in Munich, Kuala Lumpur, Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver.

Her short fiction has won first, second and third prizes and appears in many anthologies around Australia. A finalist in the 2022 Newcastle Short Story Award, in 2019, she won the inaugural Sydney Hammond Short Story Competition. Works shortlisted include the 2019 Stuart Hadow Prize, 2018 Elyne Mitchell Writing Award and the 2017 Alan Marshall Short Story Award.

Commissioned to write and produce an eight-part drama podcast, Seven Seconds, on the theme of ‘Diversity in the Workplace,’ it was released in Hong Kong, 2020.

Callum J. Jones is a Tasmanian-born writer. His work has appeared in various publications, including the  Quadrant and Tasmanian Times. ‘Shellshocked’ and ‘Tasmania’ are among the pieces he is most proud of. He has been a journalist at Conexus Financial between 2022 and 2023, and can be traced by the smell of fresh coffee. The 2023 WestWords Academy has provided him with great insights and knowledge (such as how to set up and run writers’ groups), strengthening his passion for writing.

Tabitha Laffernis is an Indian-Australian fiction writer, exploring the intimacies and politics of female friendships, female pleasure and bodily autonomy. Her work has been published in a range of independent literary journals, including Gigantic Sequins, Hobart, and Flapperhouse. She has completed residencies at the Gullkistan Center for Creativity in Laugarvatn, Iceland, and at Lighthouse Arts in Newcastle, Australia. In 2021, she was shortlisted for the inaugural Writing NSW Cultivate mentorship (then known as the Mentoring Program for Emerging Writers from Diverse Backgrounds). She loves noodle soup. 

Ruth Larner is an Australian multi-disciplinary writer of Sri Lankan and Afro-Caribbean descent. Her work explores mental health, motherhood, faith, identity and intergenerational trauma. She is currently working on How To Kill A Garden, a semi-biographical novel based upon her experience of early motherhood and postnatal depression, set in New South Wales’ idyllic Southern Highlands and Berlin.

In 2023, Ruth was selected to participate in the WestWords Academy program and was a Blacktown Mayoral Writing Competition judge.

Ruth’s poetry has appeared in Australian Poetry Journal and The Suburban Reviews’s Hills Hoist publication. Her prose has twice been featured in the WestWords Living Stories Anthologies, winning the 2023 Living Stories writing competition in her LGA. 

Having lived in London and Berlin, Ruth now resides in Wollongong with her husband and young son. 

Nadine Lebde is an Australian-Lebanese writer from Western Sydney. She has an Honours degree in Physiotherapy from the University of Sydney, and her research has been published in the British Medical Journal’s Occupational and Environmental Medicine.

Nadine was selected to be a reviewer for the StoryCasters Project. Her creative non-fiction piece was shortlisted for publication in the anthology “Arab, Australian, Other: Stories on Race and Identity” (2019) edited by Randa Abdel-Fattah and Sara Saleh. In 2008, her student blog was nominated for Edublog’s international award “Best Individual Blog”.

Samantha Lee is a writer and educator who writes both fiction and non-fiction. She was recently shortlisted in the WestWords/Ultimo Prize for her manuscript Bound. Samantha has completed two mentorships with Australian author, Kathryn Heyman, and from that was selected to attend the ‘Create Your Own Life’ Writers’ Retreat run by her and British writer, Jill Dawson.

Samantha has been shortlisted for multiple Needle in the Hay flash fiction competitions and has been published on the SBS Voices website.

Ailsa is a child of Chinese immigrants, raised in Merrylands. She is endlessly curious and passionate about intersections of technology, community building and social justice. S

he has shared poetry, fiction, performance and sound art with the world.

Samara Lo is an author from Sydney, Australia.

Her short fiction includes After Me, The Flood (Gothic Fantasy Anthology: Shadows On The Water – Flame Tree Press – 2024), A Rosella’s Home (Gothic Fantasy Anthology: Immigrant Sci-Fi Anthology – May 2023), Songs of Yesterday’s Tomorrows (The Saltbush Review: Issue 3 – May 2023), Last Teen Standing (Daily Science Fiction – Feb 2022), Morally Grey and Sunny (BAD Crime Anthology 2022), and her flash fiction One Day was awarded the highly-commended prize and published in the Living Stories Anthology 2021.
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In 2020, she was awarded the Westwords Emerging Writer’s Residency at Varuna House and in 2021 was the recipient of the Copyright Agency-WestWords Fellowship. She was a judge for the 2022 Aurealis Awards as well as the 2023 Living Stories Writing Prize and has appeared in panels and workshops for writers such as the Art Gallery of NSW’s Emerging Voices program.

The highlight of my academy year was spending time with other writers, and learning important skills such as effective grant writing and managing the business side of being an author.

Joanne Macias is a multi-disciplinary writer from Sydney who has had her first publication in the Living Stories Anthology, and upcoming second publication with Illographo Press. Her works explore themes of discovery, identity and internal strength. Although Joanne has only been writing for a short period of time, being creative was nothing new, as she is an avid photographer and line artist.

Her art has been recognised and shared by well known musicians and has her first photo being published in an upcoming anthology with Illographo press.  Acceptance into the Academy in 2023 pushed me to have more faith in my writing, find out how to become a well rounded author with all the little bits and pieces never normally thought of, and most importantly, become connected with amazing creatives, both emerging and established to inspire and guide for long term success.

Lee McKerracher is an emerging writer from western Sydney who has a passion for historical fiction. Following some success in writing competitions, she has had short stories published including; Lunch in Queen St for the Hiding in Plain Sight anthology by WestWords, Defending the Nation, in Small Things, an historical fiction anthology by Stringybark Publishing and, Across Generations, in the Society of Australian Genealogists Journal, Descent Magazine.

Lee has completed her first historical fiction novel, Parallel Lives and has commenced work on her second. Both of these works feature women who fight to have their voices heard, overcoming personal and societal challenges.

Lee views being part of the WestWords Academy 2025 cohort as an opportunity to learn, engage with other writers and to grow her writing craft.
Lee can be found:
Instagram: @leemac027
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/leemckerracherauthor

Hemat Malak is an accountant and poet, writing from the outskirts of southwestern Sydney. Coming from an immigrant family in the late 1960’s, she writes on themes of identity, motherhood and life. In 2013 and 2014 her books of spiritual writings won finalist positions in international awards. Today her writing uses poetry to give voice to life’s frustrations and the search for meaning. Her words often point to where the material life meets the spiritual, and evoke a silence that draws the reader inwards, closer to the self.

Hemat is a WestWords 2024 Academian, and her writing has been published or is forthcoming in Quadrant Magazine, Catchment Literary Journal, WestWords Living Stories Anthology, and Writerly Magazine.

You can find her on Instagram @hematmalak or her website hematmalak.com

J. Marahuyo is an award winning Filipino-Australian poet residing on Dharug country. She explores themes of identity, mental health and the power of vulnerability by dissecting the concepts of love in all its forms, and family which encompass her current work-in-progress, her first poetry collection.

She creates works that play with white space, that have prominent visual elements and incorporate Tagalog words. The Tagalog words scattered throughout her pieces are stronger for her to recall in Tagalog rather than English, this is important for her and for readers as it highlights the ramifications of colonisation on the Filipino diaspora. She writes to make sense of her experiences, to process her history and her inner and outer worlds. Her poems are both an unravelling and composition of personhood, they are an interrogation of what is to be both Filipino and Australian occupying the body of a neurodivergent woman, a depiction of her personal experience of existing in that liminal space.

She has received numerous accolades for her work and her work is celebrated and published nationally and internationally.

Christopher Marcatili is an author of fantasy, weird and contemporary queer fiction, with publications appearing in print and online. His first short story, ‘Cartograph’, was published in the UTS Writers’ Anthology in 2013 and republished in 2017 in Urchin Press’s Imaginary Worlds anthology. It was described in the Sydney Morning Herald as ‘one extraordinary feat of imagination and narration by Christopher Marcatili, who creates in Cartograph a frightening world that is at once alien and familiar.’ Other recent publications include ‘A Strange Affection’, in Spineless Wonders’ Queer as Fiction anthology and produced as an audio story in the Sonic City collection, available online here.

A short animated trailer has been released showcasing his upcoming novel, Trickster’s Wake, currently in final stages editing stages. The trailer can be viewed here.

When he isn’t producing his own fiction, Christopher studies anthropology, focusing on the creative writing cultures of Iceland. For more on his research project, click here. 

C. R. Masters has lived in South-Western Sydney her entire life. She was highly commended in her LGA for her entries to the 2022 and 2023 Westwords Living Stories competitions and longlisted for the 2022 Hachette Australia Richell Prize.

Olivia Masterfield has lived in Western Sydney her whole life. She has been writing for several years and is often a curator of fantastical and adventurous stories with a healthy garnish of romance.

Benjamin D. Muir is a writer and doctoral candidate from Western Sydney.

His, manuscript, The McMillan Diaries, was the recipient of the 2019 AAWP/UWAP Meniscus Chapter One Prize.

Tina Nyfakos is an emerging literary fiction writer from South-Western Sydney. Her work explores the psychological and existential absurdity of the human experience. She was a 2019 recipient of a WestWords-Varuna residency. In 2020, she took part in The Writing Zone, where an excerpt of her novel Galagoo was published in the anthology The Wayward Sky, and her short story Roots of Revani published in the digital anthology Sky Conversations. In 2021, she was a part of the WestWords Academy, a participant in Varuna’s The Writer’s Space: Young Writers’ Studio, and she was a winner in the Living Stories Western Sydney Writing Competition. In 2023, she took part in The Writer’s Space online program coordinated by Varuna. She has also written for SBS Voices.

The Westwords Academy was invaluable to me. It gave me a foundation, and prepared me for my future as a writer, connected me to other writers, and gave me insight into the publishing industry. It also allowed me the opportunity and platform to read my work to an audience.

Shakira Piggott is a poet and abstract painter, writing her first poetry book. She worked in the TV industry for 15 years before reconnecting with her writing and painting. Shakira received a ‘Special Mention Certificate’ for her poem ‘Lavender’ in the 2020 WB Yeats Poetry Prize and is an academician at Westwords Academy.

Paris Rosemont is an Asian-Australian poet and author of poetry collection Banana Girl (WestWords, 2023), shortlisted by the Association for the Study of Australian Literature for the 2024 Mary Gilmore Award for a first volume of poetry, and longlisted for the Poetry Book Awards 2024 (Wales). Paris’s poetry has been widely published and has won awards both locally and internationally, including first place in the Hammond House Publishing Origins Poetry Prize 2023 (UK), and shortlisted for the International Proverse Poetry Prize 2023 (Hong Kong) and Whitsundays Literary Heart Awards Poetry Prize 2024.

Paris takes delight in bringing her poetry to life through multi-disciplinary modes of expression, including theatrical performance, and has featured at events including the Red Dirt Poetry Festival 2024 (Alice Springs) and Ubud Writers and Readers Festival 2023.

Paris’s second poetry collection, Barefoot Poetess, is due for release in March 2025. She may be found on Instagram @msparisrose, Facebook www.facebook.com/parisrosemont or at www.parisrosemont.com

Orlando Silver (he/ they) is a transmasc non-binary queer writer, living and working on Darug and Gundungurra land. He is a playwright, fiction writer and poet.

Orlando often focuses on the intersections of desire, transgender identities and embodiment. He has two self published books on trans masc desire, “Soft Fruit” and “Relent”. He is the editor of “I Write the Body”, an international anthology of queer and trans writers published by Kith Books. His next anthology, “Take it Outside” will be released in November 2024. His play “Soft Daddy” is slated for production in 2025. His novel “Scratch” is under development.

Charlotte is thrilled to be joining the Westwords Academy! Her writing has previously been published in ARNA (The Sydney Arts Student Society Creative Journal), Kill Your Darlings and the anthology novel Everything All At Once (Ultimo Press). She has also won the Ultimo Prize and been shortlisted for the Inner West’s Young Creative Awards.

As a musician, Charlotte has performed throughout Sydney, received her Advanced Diploma in Musical Theatre (with Honours) and released her original 1980s inspired music online (also under the same name). Otherwise, Charlotte loves video games, Yum Cha and corgis!

Lathalia Song is a teaching artist/poet, writer and advocate. Previously an editor, designer and copywriter for various design agencies. Her hybrid works are found in Streetcake Magazine, Harpy Hydrid Review, Levatio, The Minison Project, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Authora Australis, Moss Puppy and Moon Cola zine. Editor for Authora Australis https://www.authora.net

Her illustrated poetic fables, ink designs are abstracted and screenprinted at https://www.flywaterleaflight.com.au/

Sharing the joy of creativity each year at https://www.heffalumpdezign.com.au/. A mid-career designer/copywriter and illustrator swivelling into fine art and creative writing. You can follow her as lathaliahopesong on Instagram. https://www.instagram.com/lathaliahopesong/

Munira Tabassum Ahmed, at 18, is a rising star in Western Sydney poetry and literary scene. A recipient of the 2023 WestWords-Varuna Emerging Writers’ Residency and the 2023 Faber Writing Scholarship, she was also the 2022 Kat Muscat Fellow, a Youth Ambassador for Red Room Poetry, and a medalist at the 2022 National Youth Poetry Slam. Her work has been published in Best of Australian Poems 2021, Meanjin, Australian Poetry Journal, Liminal, Runway Journal, The Lifted Brow, Cordite, and elsewhere. Munira entered the WestWords Accelerator with her first full-length manuscript The Clinging Thing. This story asks what do we owe to the women who came before us? A work of literary fiction, this work traces the convergent lives of the women around the main character, while unrealities, dreams, and recollections interrogate the duty of a matrilineal line. A writer and student in Parramatta, Munira has completed her drafts of The Clinging Thing at the City of Parramatta Library between her studies.

Krystle Anne Venal is a multidisciplinary artist and writer whose work primarily explores the tactile and sensory notions of home, memory and being human. For her, creativity and curiosity are symbiotic — to touch life with wonder is necessary. She has a life-long love affair for documentation, learning and curating open spaces for exploring creativity. In another life, she was a perhaps a botanist; here, she is very much a storyteller.

Vivian Wei is currently studying architecture at the University of Technology, Sydney. She has a strong passion in sharing stories close to her culture such as her first publication piece with Underdog’s #LoveOzYA anthology: ’The Chinese Menu for the Afterlife’. In her spare time, she works as a photographer; capturing memories of friends and food (but mostly the latter) and loves to explore the arts and design world.

Kirsten West is a writer and teacher who has written opinion pieces for SMH and Online Opinion. Her true love is fiction, which can be found in journals like The Quarry and Literary Cocktail Magazine. Kirsten has a Creative Writing Masters and is working on writing a novel that she doesn’t want to bury in the backyard.