2024 Ann Moyal Non-Fiction Fellowship

The three recipients of this year’s Ann Moyal Non-Fiction Fellowship have been selected.

This Fellowship has been established with a bequest from the late Dr Ann Moyal AM, FAHA, a leading Australian historian of science, technology and telecommunications, as well as a biographer and author. Dr Ann Moyal was an alumna of Varuna, and wanted to provide opportunities for other writers and scholars to enjoy the support and collegiality of a Varuna residency.

Three fellowships are offered each year to established writers with an Australian focus who are developing an original work founded on research in the broad fields of the humanities and social sciences, particularly history, biography, climate change, science, technology, the arts and the environment.

This year, we received a total of 39 applications with very strong contenders for the fellowships.

We are happy to announce that the three Ann Moyal Non-Fiction Fellowship recipients are:

Anna Hickey-Moody

Jennifer Martin

Patricia Pender

ANNA HICKEY-MOODY for Carbon Cultures

Anna Hickey-Moody is the Director of the Arts and Humanities Institute at Maynooth University (2024-2029) and the inaugural Senior Academic Leadership Ireland (SALI) Professor of Intersectional Humanities. Her work explores intersecting angles of difference, experience and identity through philosophical and creative approaches. The first person in her family who was born in Australia, Anna returned to Ireland in 2023 to develop interdisciplinary research culture exploring intersectionality. She is the author of 8 acclaimed academic books, the most recent of which is Faith Stories, published by Manchester University Press. She divides her time between homes with her partner, his son and their greyhound in Thornbury, Melbourne, and a collection of brilliant academics in a shared house in Kildare, Ireland. 

JENNIFER MARTIN  for Eva Sommer, Girl Reporter

Jennifer Martin is a Senior Lecturer in Communication at Deakin University, where her research interests include literary journalism and Australian media history. Jennifer is a former award-winning journalist of more than 25 years’ experience working across all media platforms, including local newspapers, SBS, ABC and community radio. She is also the author of two young adult novels. Jennifer is currently writing a biography, “Girl Reporter”, on the life of Eva Sommer, who, in 1956 at the age of 22, won Australia’s first international prize for journalism, the Walkley Award, the nation’s equivalent of the US Pulitzer Prize. 

PATRICIA PENDER for Safe Work

Patricia Pender is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Newcastle specialising in early modern women’s writing and contemporary cultural studies. She is the author of I'm Buffy and You're History: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Contemporary Feminism (Bloomsbury 2016) and Early Modern Women's Writing and the Rhetoric of Modesty (Palgrave 2012). She has published a chapbook of poetry, Bibliophilic, (Puncher & Wattmann 2018), as well as work in Cordite, Overland, and Southerly.  

The following applicants were assessed as highly commended:

Mary Hoban - Under a Dormant Volcano

Helena Kadmos - Breadcrumbs: A Life in Literature

Bastian Phelan - I Know Such a Hidden Pool

Victoria Stead - The Labour of Belonging