Writers Victoria Write-ability and Glenfern fellowships announced

Writers Victoria has announced the recipients of its 2017 Write-ability and Glenfern fellowships.

Five emerging writers with disability were awarded Write-ability fellowships. They are:

• Mary Borsellino for ‘The Alchemist’s Girls’, a dark fantasy/queer YA novel about two rival teen witches who ‘save a city and fall in love’
• Sonia Marcon for ‘There is a Space’, an autobiography in different narrative styles that explores ‘living a life without Multiple Sclerosis to living a life with it’
• Jarrod Marrinon for ‘Jarrod Marrinon—My Story, My Life, My Feels’, a combination of fiction, biography and spoken word exploring disability and sexuality, which Marrinon plans to publish as a zine, album and film
• Fiona Murphy for ‘The Shape of Sound’, an essay collection about ‘learning Auslan, disability pride and Deaf culture’
• Jessica Walton for ‘Writing My Body’, a mix of poetry, fiction and nonfiction on the topic of ‘cancer, amputation, disability and chronic pain’.

Each of the fellows will receive mentoring opportunities, manuscript assessments and free attendance at Writers Victoria workshops.

Two writers were also awarded high commendations: Maribel Steel for her travel stories ‘Touching Landscapes’, which are written from the perspective of being vision-impaired; and Michelle Vasiliu for ‘Where Have You Gone Mum?’, a middle-grade fiction novel about a 13-year-old girl whose mother is diagnosed with bipolar disorder.

The Write-ability fellowships support the career development of Victorian writers with disability. Writers Victoria director Kate Larsen said ‘this year was a particularly difficult decision, with a large number of high-quality projects entered from around Victoria’.

The 2017 Glenfern fellows were also announced.

This year’s fellows are Marta Skrabacz, Susan Paterson and Andy Butler, with each to receive three months’ use of a writer’s studio at Glenfern mansion in East St Kilda.

For more information, visit the Writers Victoria website here.

Category: Local news