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Our Staff

The Writers Victoria office and program are coordinated and managed by our dedicated staff team. 

Anna Kate Blair

Program and Partnerships Manager

Anna is a writer, programmer and cultural historian. She has previously worked at arts and educational organisations including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the University of Melbourne and the University of Cambridge, where she also did a PhD in History of Art and Architecture. Anna is from Aotearoa, originally, but lives in Narrm. Her first novel, The Modern, will be published by Scribner in September 2023.

A portrait of Anna Kate Blair.

Flora Lun

Finance Manager

Flora is CPA qualified accountant. She has a skill for telling a story with numbers, which makes her an integral part of the team at Writers Victoria. Flora loves working with and around writers, and looks forward to improving her own writing skills – gaining confidence with writing styles related to her work as well as personally, and she hopes to one day share her unique views on the world via her writing. She is also an energetic body pumper who loves to go to the gym.


Hasib Hourani

Online Learning Administrator

Hasib Hourani lives on unceded Wangal Country. You can read his work in Meanjin, Overland, Australian Poetry, and Going Down Swinging, among others. His debut book of poetry will be published with Giramondo in 2024 and New Directions in 2025. He is currently serving as Creative Producer at Liminal Magazine.


Jeanie Watson

Marketing and Communications Manager

Jeanie is a freelance copywriter and content writer. She has experience in communications and publishing roles within the arts, not-for-profit, health and government sectors in Australia and New Zealand. She holds a BA in Communications (Professional Writing) and Diploma in Book Editing and Publishing. Her career began as an editor for the National Museum of Australia and National Gallery of Australia before she moved into magazine publishing and strategic communications and marketing roles.


Jennifer Nguyen

Program Admin Officer: Competitions

Jennifer is the author of poetry chapbook When I die slingshot my ashes onto the surface of the moon (Subbed In, 2019). Her work has been published in OverlandCorditeBest of Australian Poems 2021, City of Literature’s Poet Laureates of Melbourne series, among others. In 2019 she received a Wheeler Centre Hot Desk fellowship for poetry. She was the 2022 Associate Producer at Emerging Writers’ Festival.

Photo of Jennifer Nguyen

Jessica Obersby

Co-Writeability Program Manager

Jessica is an emerging writer who believes in the power of stories to change people’s lives. Her work in progress is YA speculative fiction that has a protagonist with mental illness. Jessica is a graduate of the RMIT Professional Writing and Editing degree and in 2019 was a recipient of a Writers Victoria Write-ability Fellowship​. She is currently studying Environmental Science and rescued animals outnumber humans in her household 12 to two!


Kit Russell

Online Learning Administrator

Kit is a freelance editor and is currently undertaking her Master of Writing and Publishing at RMIT. She has been working with Writers Victoria as a volunteer since 2018 and is now a part of the online team. A scribbler more than an author, she loves working with writers to bring their stories to life (and to get the chance to read books she wouldn’t usually get her mitts on!). She lives and works in Naarm, on the unceded lands of the Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung and Bunurong Boon Wurrung Peoples.

Photo of Kit Russell

Laura Henderson

Bookkeeper

Laura’s background in arts administration includes stints producing and managing for theatre companies and arts festivals across Australia including Belvoir St Theatre, Bell Shakespeare, Sydney Festival, Brisbane Writers Festival, Queensland Writers Centre and ACMI. She holds a Master of Creative Industries Management and is currently working towards her Diploma of Accounting. She loves books and spreadsheets equally and lives with her loving cat, Birdie.

Laura Henderson with her cat Birdie

Lou Garcia-Dolnik

Membership Officer

Lou is an emerging poet and editor working on unceded Gadigal land (for the moment!). Their work has been awarded Second Prize in Overland’s Judith Wright Poetry Prize (2019), a place on the shortlist for the 2020 Blake Prize, and an Academy of American Poets University Prize in 2021. A poetry editor for Voiceworks and recipient of a Hot Desk Fellowship from The Wheeler Centre, you can catch their stuff in Australian Poetry Journal, LIMINAL, Overland, Rabbit, Running Dog, Runway Journal, Un Magazine and Voiceworks.


Lucy Hamilton

CEO

Lucy has over fifteen years of arts administration experience. She has held roles at Express Media and Regional Arts Victoria, as well as voluntary ro​les with Multicultural Arts Victoria and the Human Rights Arts and Film Festival. She lived in the UK for 7 years, where she studied medieval French literature and had a brief stint in the world of advertising while working as a stage manager and production manager across comedy clubs, fringe venues and festivals.


Lyndel Caffrey

Co-Writeability Program Manager

Lyndel Caffrey is a disabled writer, mentor, historian, editor and creative writing teacher. She works to help writers build a deeper understanding of the stories they have to tell and the ways they can tell them. Lyndel writes poetry, historical fiction, and non-fiction, and has been published by ‘Griffith Review’, ‘Southerly’, ‘Poetrix’, ‘Vignette Press’ and newmatilda.com, among others. Lyndel has worked with Writers Victoria and Writeability for many years, as a tutor, mentor, panellist, manuscript assessor, Writeability Goes Regional Mentor and more. This is her third time working as Writeability Program Manager, a program she’s been deeply committed to since it was established.

A portrait of Lyndel Caffrey.

Sarah Giles

Marketing and Communications Officer

Sarah Giles (she/her) is a writer and PhD candidate at Swinburne University. She is researching the possibilities of the contemporary short story cycle as a means for exploring women’s experiences of isolation, trauma, mental illness, and relational agency. Sarah’s creative work is informed by the life and art of Joy Hester (1920—1960). Her writing has been published in Creative Writing Responses to Images of the Living BrainTEXT Journal, The Incompleteness Book, ACE III, ACE IVThe Victorian Writer and Lip Magazine, among others. Sarah currently works as a Sessional Academic at the University of Melbourne.

A portrait of Sarah Giles.

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