2024 Cove Park Fellowship Recipient

We are delighted to announce the recipient of the Cove Park International Fellowship. Hailing from Western Sydney, playwright and novelist Brooke Robinson’s debut novel, The Interpreter, was published in 2023 with Harvill Secker/Penguin Random House in Australia, the UK and Commonwealth, and HarperCollins in the USA. It is translated into German, Italian, Czech and Russian and is in development as a TV series in Hollywood. Penguin Random House will publish her second novel, The Negotiator, in June 2024.

Brooke will be taking part in a four-week residency in Cove Park, Scotland in September-October 2024 and will be part of Wigtown Book Festival’s program. During her stay, she plans to work on a novel based on her acclaimed stage play Bad Machine.

Thank you to all the Varuna alumni who applied for this international opportunity with Cove Park and Wigtown Book Festival in Scotland, we received an incredibly high standard of entries. Many showed relevance to Wigtown Book Festival’s program this year which focuses on new stories about climate change and socially relevant themes, which formed a key part of this year’s selection criteria.

Applications were judged based on recency and critical reception of the applicant’s published work to date, relevance of the work to the Wigtown Book Festival program, and how the applicant may benefit from this residency.