Authors among Creative Australia Fellowship recipients
Authors Isobelle Carmody, Jennifer Mills and Fiona Murphy are among the 2025 recipients of the $80,000 Creative Australia Fellowships.
The fellowships, which last two years, involve the provision of financial support for established artists and arts workers to grow their creative practice and professional development.
Carmody is a writer of science fiction, fantasy, children’s and young adult literature; her most recent title is Comes the Night (A&U Children’s, 2024). She is set to use the fellowship for ‘new ambitious works’, focusing on her graphic novel in progress, ‘The Journey of Art and Hope’, which ‘will engage all her writing and illustration skills’.
Mills is an author, editor and critic; her most recent title is Salvage (Picador, 2025). In the fellowship, she plans to work on fiction project ‘Transference’, ‘an ambitious project which unifies many of the themes that [Mills] has followed in her earlier novels and in her short fiction: ideas of exile and loss, of ecology and responsibility, of nature and labour’.
Murphy is an award-winning Deaf writer and arts critic; in 2021, she released a memoir, The Shape of Sound (Text). During the fellowship, Murphy plans to ‘experiment with representing sign language on the page, which will inform the creation of a novel about contemporary deaf life’.
The overall fellowship program offered 16 places in total this year, across fields of arts and disability; community arts and cultural development; dance; emerging and experimental arts; First Nations; literature; music; theatre; and visual arts. Creative Australia said that this year’s program represents ‘the largest fellowship investment round to date’, due to additional support from new cultural organisations First Nations Arts, Writing Australia and Music Australia.
Writing Australia director Wenona Byrne said of the organisation’s contribution, ‘As the first investment announced by the newly established Writing Australia, this fellowship carries special significance. It reflects our commitment to investing in writing at the highest level, giving an established writer the rare and precious gift of time to write.’
Among other fellowship recipients are artists, playwrights and songwriters including Lior Attar, Robert Andrew, Samara Hersch, Victoria Hunt, L-FRESH The LION, Ash McGregor, April Phillips, Thelma Plum, Daen John Sansbury-Smith, Maurial Spearim, Dan Sultan, Aseel Tayah and Emily Wurramara.
More information is available on Creative Australia’s website.
Pictured (left–right): Isobelle Carmody, Fiona Murphy (photo credit: Jade Warne), and Jennifer Mills.
Category: Awards Local news
