Gurn wins 2025 Deep Creek Residency Fellowship
Matilda Bookshop has announced Tom Gurn as the winner of the 2025 Deep Creek Residency Fellowship for his submission, ‘Pugholes’.
Gurn was chosen from a shortlist of six and will receive a week-long residency at Grass Tree Gully in Deep Creek with a breakfast hamper, $500 for a living/travel subsidy, a 90-minute mentorship session with Favel Parrett (Kimmi: Queen of the Dingoes, There Was Still Love), and a consultation and manuscript assessment with Ultimo Press.
Based on Kaurna Yerta in South Australia, Gurn is the fourth writer from South Australia to win the fellowship. He has been a finalist for the MIKI Prize, highly commended for the Katharine Susannah Prichard Award for short fiction, and published in TEXT, Particle, Overland and Baby Teeth.
Gurn said, ‘I’m so grateful and so honoured and beyond excited for this priceless opportunity. When I read the email [about winning the prize], I gasped so loud it was like somebody opened the emergency door on an airplane. Not a joke. I think I scared my housemates. […] From the bottom of my heart, thanks so much for giving me cause for hope.’
The judging panel said, ‘This year’s diverse and beguiling shortlist included a range of narrative voices with an emphasis on memoir or autofiction, revealing current trends in reflective, even self-reflexive pieces of writing. We loved bearing witness, in particular, to experiences of transition and transformation, as well as authors troubling the understanding of what home might mean in contemporary Australia.
‘The winning submission, “Pugholes” by Thomas Gurn, is a work of fiction, however, and stood out to the judges for its originality of voice and style, its South Australian suburban setting, and its casual, wry humour while dealing with significant experiences such as loss and heartbreak, love and share houses.’
Last year’s winner was Rebecca Burton for ‘Winter in Cairo’.
More information is available on the Matilda Bookshop website and Instagram.
Category: Awards Local news
