2025 Writer’s Space Fellowship recipients announced
The Writer’s Space Fellowship is now in its fifth year and open to emerging or established writers with disability and/or are D/deaf who are developing new work. The fellowship is made possible through generous funding from the Australian Government Department of Social Services.
In 2024, this fellowship was open nationally for the first time and we received an incredible response with the callout. A total of 116 submissions were received, drawing applicants from South Australia, Western Australia and Tasmania.
Assessors were tasked with selecting six recipients to receive a 2-week residency at Varuna which includes one-on-one mentorship and all travel costs.
During the assessment, sixteen applicants were also highlighted as Highly Commended by the assessors: Holly English, Mia Formichella, Rachael Guy, Jacqui Holland, Naavi Karan, Dechen Khadro, Kate Leaver, Vivian Lindsay, Bedelia Lowrencev, Phoebe Lupton, Jamila Main, CB Mako, Jasper Peach, Tayla Richardson, Sharon Rockman and Michelina Sirianni.
Congratulations to the following six fellowship recipients and their work. We look forward to welcoming them to the house this year:
Antonio Badalassi for Endure
Antonio started writing six years ago with the intent of telling his story. Being born physically disabled brings with it some obvious physical challenges but what he has tried to write about is the largely invisible conflict that existed between his disabled body and own mind – and how that invisibility was both his goal and prize, as well as ultimately becoming a trap he had set for himself. It is only recently that he has finally started accepting himself as someone who is disabled and this has brought, and continues to bring, a profound peace to his life. If his story could contribute to a reader’s own journey of acceptance, there could be no greater gift he can give to this world.
Michelle Hyde for Grace
Michelle is a person with Disability and a disability and neurodiversity advocate. She is proudly of Gamilaraay descent and storytelling is one of the ways she connects with Culture. Her work engages with themes of inclusion and belonging – and how society defines ‘normal’ at any given time. She also has a strong interest in story sovereignty – who has the right, and what are the responsibilities of telling someone’s story? This Fellowship will allow huge progress in her current writing projects and add richly to her networks. Michelle believes that storytelling is connection – and connection is healing.
Micheline Lee for The Beggar Boy
Micheline is the author of Quarterly Essay 91: Lifeboat - Disability, Humanity and the NDIS. Her novel, 'The Healing Party', was a finalist in the Victorian Premiers Literary Awards, the Dobbie and the Voss Literary Prize. Her essays are published in The Monthly and book collections. She has returned to fiction writing with the novel she will be working on during the Varuna residency. Micheline is also a Mum, a PhD candidate, a previous human rights lawyer and visual artist. She was born in Penang Malaysia and currently lives in Melbourne.
Rania Omar for The Anatomy of Justice
Rania is an emerging writer from Western Sydney. Her writing often reflects on her lived experiences of mental illness and disability as well as culture and social commentary.
Her aim is to create safe spaces through the written word and tell the untold stories.
Rania has published an audio story on the Outloud website as part of the Stories from here collection. It has been featured on FBI radio, All the best podcast and the Stories from here podcast with Outloud arts. has also been featured in the Wild greens magazine Volume IV, issue iii. Rania has also performed as a slam poet at Bankstown Poetry Slam, Fairfield Poetry Slam and Immersiva with Harmonity.
Maggie Scott for Cock Forest
Maggie Scott is a writer based in Naarm on the unceded lands of the Kulin Nations. She has co-edited three Pan Macmillan anthologies with her feminist writers’ collective: Just Between Us, Mothers and Others, and #MeToo: Stories from the Australian Movement. A former co-host of Club Soderbergh (nominated for a 2019 Australian Podcast Award), she has also worked as a writer and communications specialist for Her Place Women’s Museum, Monash University, The University of Melbourne, Lonely Planet, MIFF, and more.
Gerard Starling for East
Gerard Starling was born and raised in Melbourne’s outer eastern suburbs on Wurundjeri Country. His poetry, fiction, and non-fiction writing probes the masculinities in this locality. Gerard is a PhD candidate commencing creative practice research in 2025 at RMIT University. His poetry can be read in Tart Magazine.
