Announcing the new Mascara team ….
Laura Pettenuzzo: Junior Commissioning Editor
Laura (she/her) is a disabled writer living on Wurundjeri country. She writes Plain and Easy English content for various organisations and has been published by The Big Issue, ABC Everyday, The Age and SBS Voices. Laura is also a member of the Victorian Disability Advisory Council.
Beau Windon: First Nations Commissioning Editor
Beau Windon is a neurodivergent author of Wiradjuri heritage based in Naarm. He writes quirky stories about quirky people (including his quirky self) and poetry about all of the dark goo washing over his mind. He has been awarded a 2021 Writeability Fellowship, a 2022 residency from the City of Melbourne, and an arts grant from the Australia Council for the Arts. Beau’s further creative non-fiction has had him shortlisted in three categories for the Lord Mayor’s Creative Writing Awards: winning the Self-Told Stories by Writers Living with Disability category and getting runner-up for the Indigenous Life Stories category. Recently, he was one of the winners of Griffith Review’s Emerging Voices 2023 competition. Beau has had personal essays published in Griffith Review, Island, Archer, Mascara’s Resilience Anthology, VICE, Dear Lover, and Writer’s Victoria. You can find out more about him at: www.beauwindon.com
Katie Hansord: Senior Researcher
Katie Hansord is a writer and researcher living in Naarm (Melbourne). Her book Colonial Australian Women Poets: Political Voice and Feminist Traditions (Anthem 2021) examines nineteenth century women’s poetry in the contexts of colonialism, imperialism, and their relationships to gender. Her writing has been published in ALS, Hecate, Mascara, AJVS, and JASAL, as well as Journal and the Long Paddock, Southerly Journal.
Misbah Wolf: Prose Editor
Misbah Wolf, a multi-dimensional artist has a Masters in Creative Writing from the University of QLD and post-graduate qualifications in Research Methods, resides on Wurundjeri land.
Wolf, the author of Rooftops in Karachi (Vagabond Press 2018), shortlisted in the Thomas Shapcott Prize, and Carapace (Vagabond Press 2022). She has been active in poetry for over 15 years, participating in Queensland Poetry Festival, the Emerging Writers’ Festival and the Sydney Writers Festival. She also contributed to the Melbourne Fringe Festival 2019 as a costume and art developer for theater. Wolf was awarded a Creative Victoria Grant in 2022.
Duane Leewai: Graphic Designer
Duane Leewai is a Dharug-based graphic artist, illustrator and art director. Born in Fiji he is of Indian, Chinese and iTaukei descent. Duane studied at TAFE Queensland (Southbank Campus) and graduated with certificates in Visual Arts and Animation, Printing and Graphics.
Michelle Cahill: Artistic Director
Michelle Cahill (she/they) is of Goan Anglo-Indian heritage living on unceded Guringai lands. An award-winning novelist and poet, their collection Letter to Pessoa (Giramondo) won the UTS Glenda Adams Award and was shortlisted in the Steele Rudd Award. Cahill was awarded a Red Room Poetry Fellowship and was shortlisted in the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award, the ABR Peter Porter Prize and the ABR Elizabeth Jolley Prize. Daisy & Woolf is published with Hachette. Cahill’s essays have appeared in the Sydney Review of Books, The Weekend Australian and Wasafari
Announcing the 2023 Mascara Varuna Writers’ and Editors’ Residency
JUDGE’S COMMENTS
The judging panel for the 2023 Mascara Writers’ and Editors’ Varuna Residency was impressed by the outstanding quality of many of the submissions. Of 78 entries, the range and breadth of voices, styles and genres on display is an indicative sign of the innovation pursued at the desks of First Nations and CALD writers across Australia, whether in cities or small towns, by the coast or in the bush, whether young and emerging, or older and emerging, or more established in their writing career. Many works evoke little-known aspects of Australian life, ranging from individual biographical studies to stories of local families and communities, to large-scale retrievals of national history. These explorations draw from experiments with archival records, as well as experiments with the writing body, all contributing to an ongoing questioning of what it means to document presence and history in this country. A dominant theme running through these works is the complexity of place, whether encountered as a recent arrival to these shores, or as a writer holding deep ancestral ties to the land. The courage and ambition propelling these undertakings are to be commended in the highest possible terms.
Of this high-quality field, four submissions were exceptional for the grace, precision, and perception of their writing. These submissions resonate with a contemporary edge, vividly foreshadowing new futures in Australian writing. Poetic modes of inquiry prevail across a rich array of genres, not only in lyric and experimental poetry, but also in long form fiction and non-fiction. They are also projects that are eminently realisable within the scope of the residency and hold the potential to be significantly developed through the editorial process. We are thrilled to announce that the four residencies go to: Timmah Ball’s Blue Print for Another World; Alison J. Barton’s Not Telling; Maria van Neerven’s To Give Them a Voice; and Vivienne Cleven’s Beautiful Monsters. These strong submissions reflect a considerable diversity of genre, aesthetic, and style, and represent a range of ages, backgrounds, and experiences within First Nations’ writing.
Timmah Ball
Timmah Ball is a writer and zine maker of Ballardong Noongar heritage. Previous zines and micro publications include Wild Tongue in collaboration with Loving Feminist Literature for Melbourne Fringe (2016), Wild Tongue Vol. 2 in collaboration with Azja Kulpinska for Next Wave Festival (2018) and Do Planners Dream of Electric Trees? (2021) created through Arts House Makeshift public residency. Her writing has appeared in a range of anthologies and literary magazines including Sydney Review of Books, Meanjin, The Griffith Review and Columbia University’s The Avery Review. In 2016 she won the Westerly Patricia Hackett Prize.
BLUE PRINT FOR ANOTHER WORLD
Timmah Ball’s collection of experimental non-fiction examines dispossession in the context of contemporary urban planning. Through playful yet committed theoretical engagement and radical self-reading of her own experience as an urbanist, Ball sets out to deconstruct the western logic of space (states, borders, regions, cities) and recast place in terms of the ‘powerful tapestry of First Nation countries that make up this continent.’ Her writing is richly engaged, revealing a strong social commitment to the connection between poetics and cartography, between language and country.
Alison J. Barton
Alison J Barton is a Wiradjuri poet based in Naarm. Themes of race relations, Aboriginal-Australian history, colonisation, gender and psychoanalytic theory are central to her work. Her work appears in Meanjin, Overland, Best of Australian Poetry 2022 (APJ), the Liquid Amber Prize Anthology: Poetry of Encounter, Australian Poetry Journal, Otoliths, Rabbit, Westerly Mag, StylusLit, Resilience (Ed. Mascara) , The Storms (Ireland), Poethead (Ireland), The Night Heron Barks (USA), Under Bunjil, Yarra Libraries Receipt Poetry, Bluebottle Journal and LinkBund. In 2022 Alison received a commended place in the WB Yeats Poetry Prize for Australia, was shortlisted for both the Queensland Poetry Oodgeroo Noonuccal Poetry Prize (for ‘buried light’) and the Pratik Magazine Fire and Rain edition prize (for ‘How to grieve in the open air’) and longlisted for the inaugural Liquid Amber Press Poetry Prize.
She can be found on Instagram @alison_j_barton
NOT TELLING
Alison J. Barton’s first full-length collection of poetry draws from family lore, Australian history, archival material, and psychoanalytic theory in its attempt to realise the potential of language to retrieve identity. Barton’s poetry proceeds as an act of literary decolonisation, in pursuit of the healing, relatedness, and telling the truth.
Vivienne Cleven
Kamilaroi author Vivienne Cleven was born in 1968 and grew up in outback Queensland. She left school at thirteen to work with her father as a jillaroo: building fences and mustering sheep and cattle. She also worked as a cleaner, barmaid, roustabout, nanny, and photographer, among other jobs. Her novel Bitin’ Back won the David Unaipon Award and shortlisted in the 2002 Courier-Mail Book of the Year Award and the 2002 South Australian Premier’s Award for Fiction. She wrote the playscript for Bitin’ Back, which was performed by Brisbane’s Kooemba Jdarra Indigenous Theatre Company. Sister’s Eye was published in 2002 and was chosen in the 2003 People’s Choice shortlist of One Book One Brisbane. Her writing is included in Fresh Cuttings, the first anthology of UQP Black Australian Writing, published in 2003.
BEAUTIFUL MONSTERS
Beautiful Monsters is a dark satire about small town life, beauty, false identities, racism, belonging and self-love. Cleven’s language is wry, imagistic and lexically creative; her narrative focalisations of direct and indirect Aboriginal English are are deft, seamless and culturally specific. Her characters and idioms are memorable and original in subverting the settler tropes of crime and outback noir.
Maria Van Neerven
Maria van Neerven is a Mununjali Yugambeh women from south-east Queensland. She is a retired library technician who loves reading and writing poetry. Her first published story was in the journal The Lifted Brow: Blak Brow (2018) and she has also published poetry in In Our Hands, (2022) a collection of poetry from Elders and knowledge keepers. Maria has performed her work on stages across Alice Springs and Brisbane and is working on her first collection.
TO GIVE THEM A VOICE
The poems in this collection are as poignant as they are assured in the smallest movement of the heart, in the caesura of the spoken word, in the multi-tonal shape of the page which honours the rituals of daily life through trauma, violence, poverty and joy. These lyrical cameos remind us of family, colonisation, discrimination and mental health. They are precise, carefully restored through memory’s portal and gentle in their healing as they look to the future.
Mascara Varuna Writers’ and Editors’ Residency Longlist
In partnership with Varuna, The Writer’s House, the Copyright Agency and the Adès Family Foundation, we are delighted to announce the inaugural Mascara Varuna Writers’ and Editors’ Residency. This is an exciting opportunity for four emerging or established writers who identify as First Nations or CaLD with a manuscript they are wanting to develop. Applications were open be for projects in poetry, fiction, non-fiction or in criticism. The winners receive an all-expenses paid one week residency at Varuna, a manuscript reading by a senior editor and mentored emerging editor. Travel costs will be paid for writers who are interstate (flights and/ or road travel). Varuna is a catered residency in the World Heritage listed Blue Mountains. The Residency week will be held from 30 January 2023 to 5 February 2023.
This is a chance for the writers to immerse in their work in the solitude and natural beauty of Varuna, a place of renewal, fellowship and intense creative practice.
We thank the Gundungurra people for their care of and connection to land, culture and community. We pay our respects to their elders: past, present and emerging, acknowledge that we live and work on stolen land that is unceded. Always was, always will be.
Judges: Multi-award winning Bundjalung writer Melissa Lucashenko and poet and critic Lucy Van.
Announcement of Longlist
Thank you to everyone who entered and thank you for your patience. The judges have longlisted the following writers for the 2023 Mascara Varuna Writer’s Residency.
Sharlene Allsopp Through a Glass, Darkly (Memoir)
Timmah Ball “Blueprint for Another World” (Experimental Non-fiction)
Alison J. Barton “Not Telling” (Poetry)
Vivienne Cleven “Beautiful Monsters” (Fiction)
Anneliz Marie Erese “International” (Fiction)
Coco Huang Slipstitch (Poetic Intermedia)
Barbara Ivusic “Hevelyn Farm” (Fiction)
Atul Joshi Turn Back Time (Fiction)
Suneeta Peres da Costa The Prodigal (Poetry, Prose Poetry)
Mesh Tennakoon Misplaced (Short Fiction)
Anne-Marie Te Whiu Mettle (Poetry)
Maria van Neerven “To Give them a Voice” (Poetry)
Misbah Wolf “A Book of Shadows” (Auto mythological and historical prose)
2019 Varuna Mascara Western Sydney Writers Fellowship
We are delighted to announce the winner and shortlisted writers for the inaugural 2019 Varuna Mascara Western Sydney Writers Fellowship which offers a one week, all expenses paid residency at Varuna, a publishing consultancy worth $800 & and a manuscript appraisal with Giramondo Press. This is an innovative and prestigious opportunity for a Western Sydney Writer currently working on a poetry, fiction, or creative non-fiction manuscript.
We would like to congratulate all the shortlisted writers; the manuscripts were of an excellent standard. As judges we considered quality and originality of writing. Our thanks to Varuna, the Writer’s House and Create NSW for this opportunity for Mascara to support excellent writing.
Shortlist
Jessie Tu “Field Notes on Language and Voicelessness”
Adele Dumont “Elsewhere”
Dave Drayton “The Poetranslator”
Shannon Anima “The Running Game”
Jessica Seaborn “Tommy Brewer”
Winner
Karina Ko lives in Sydney where she graduated in Law and in Arts. Her parents came from Hong Kong. She is working on a collection of short stories.
Judges Comments: We were impressed with Karina Ko’s original voice, tackling awkward, often political topics like class, ethnicity and queerness with a surreal and surprising imagination.
Program Details
The fellowship week at Varuna will be held in April 2019, with the exact date yet to be confirmed. The week will run from Monday to Monday and includes accommodation and full board.
The fellowship week will be with four other writers who are also on this program. There will be a half-day publishing workshop during that week with Mary Cunnane, who will talk about publishing, negotiating contracts, finding a publisher, the pros and cons of using an agent, what to expect throughout the process, and so on.
The Varuna Mascara Fellow receives an $800 budget to pay for a consultant for the writer. Varuna and Mascara Literary Review will identify the best match for this consultant/mentor relationship.
Applications were open from 1 August 2018 to 20 September 2018 and were judged by Michelle Hamadache and Michelle Cahill.
The fellowship also includes an optional manuscript appraisal by Giramondo Press.
Varuna and Mascara Literary Review expect to feature the winning writer in an event as part of the Varuna Blue Mountains Annual Writers’ Festival.
