The Writing Life

After winning the Grace Marion Wilson Emerging Writers Competition in 2014, Else volunteered at Writers Victoria, worked at the Emerging Writers Festival and studied creative writing at RMIT. Else has been published widely, including Visible Ink, Australian Book Review, The Suburban Review and Offset.  Her fiction has won or been shortlisted for awards such as the Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize, the Lord Mayor’s Creative Writing Awards, the Fair Australia Prize, the VU Overland Short Story Prize and the Margaret River Short Story Competition.

Writing may be a solitary pursuit, but it doesn’t follow that being a writer means resigning yourself to loneliness and isolation. Writing communities, large and small, exist in all kinds of forms, catering to all kinds of writers. Some communities develop organically.

Prior to becoming a YA author, Fiona Wood used to work in marketing and arts management, did some freelance journalism and spent 12 years working as a television scriptwriter penning episodes for some beloved TV shows, hour-long specials and children’s drama. Her first YA novel Six Impossible Things was shortlisted for the Children's Book Council of Australia Book of the Year, Older Readers, in 2011; and Wildlife, her second novel, won that award in 2014.

Writers Victoria is thrilled to announce that Heidi Everett and Jessica Walton will be the 2019 Publishability Fellows. Heidi will be using 12-month fellowship to work on her memoir ‘My Friend Fox’ about her experience of schizoaffective disorder. Jessica Walton will be penning a collection of poems on disability and dance tilted ‘Crip the Light Fantastic’.

Three writers also had their work highly commended by Andy Jackson, the Publishability Fellowships judge: Daniel Kraus, Anthony Riddell and Michelle Vasiliu.