2025 Red Room Poetry Fellows announced

We are delighted to announce the six poets selected for the 2025 Red Room Poetry Fellowship.

Thanks to generous program supporters Bret Walker AO SC, Tim Game SC and The Adès Family Foundation, Red Room Poetry are offering five in-person residencies at Varuna and one Anywhere Remote Residency. All six poets will be in residence simultaneously, establishing a community of practice and encouraging new poetic connections.

Applications were assessed anonymously, with selections based solely on the strength of the project proposal, the poet’s goals for their residency, and their work sample. This year, the program received an unprecedented 219 applications — a testament to the depth and vibrancy of contemporary poetry in Australia.

Each Fellow will receive a stipend, mentorship, and a week-long residency from Monday, 25 August to Monday, 1 September 2025. Their work will also be showcased as part of Poetry Month 2025, including 30in30 poetry commissions and a live reading at Varuna (details to be announced).

Introducing the 2025 Red Room Poetry Fellows and their bios below:

1. Dženana Vucic (VIC)

2. Kaitlen Wellington (ACT)

3. Madison Godfrey (WA)

4. Nam Le (VIC)

5. Xiaole Zhan (VIC)

6. Shaine Melrose (SA) - Anywhere Remote Residency

Dženana Vucic is a Bosnian-Australian writer. Her essays and poetry have been published in Australian Poetry Journal, Cordite, Kill Your Darlings, Meanjin, Overland, Sydney Review of Books, and others. She is working on a poetry collection and an autotheoretical novel.

Kaitlen Wellington is a Yuin woman who is an emerging writer, with poems published in the Australian Poetry Journal and Guwayu-For All Times. Kaitlen has also been a part of Poetry in First Nations Languages and Baraya Barray Whale Song program. She is passionate about storytelling and loves utilising contemporary forms to reclaim her narrative and to keep her Ancestors’ stories alive.

Dr Madison Godfrey is a writer, editor, educator and the author of Dress Rehearsals (Allen & Unwin: JOAN, 2023). Their writing has been described as “sensual and often funny” by The Guardian and "fiercely punk and undeniably powerful" by ArtsHub. Madison has performed poetry at The Sydney Opera House, Glastonbury Festival, and in a glass-bottomed cable car suspended above the Blue Mountains. Currently they live on Whadjuk Noongar land.

Nam Le’s debut poetry collection 36 Ways of Writing a Vietnamese Poem was published in March 2024 in Australia, the U.S. and U.K. Poems from it appeared in Poetry, Paris Review, Granta, American Poetry Review, BOMB, HEAT, Overland and elsewhere. His work is widely translated, anthologised and taught.

Xiaole Zhan (詹小乐) is a Chinese-Aotearoa writer and composer based in Naarm. Their work is upcoming in AUP New Poets 11. They are the 2024 Kat Muscat Fellow, and the winner of the 2023 Kill Your Darlings Non-Fiction Prize. In Chinese, their name means 'Little Happy' but can also be read as 'Little Music'.

Shaine Melrose is a queer writer/poet, retired gardener, living with chronic illness on Kaurna Yerta, in the Adelaide Hills. Shaine's poetry has been widely published and recently her debut collection The Natural World Somersaults was released by Walleah Press.

Partners and Supporters

The Red Room Poetry Fellowship is proudly supported by Bret Walker AO SC, Tim Game SC, and other generous individuals and partners.