Accessibility at Varuna
Varuna is committed to supporting writers with disability and/or who are D/deaf to access our residencies, workshops and online programs.
We have a Disability Inclusion Advisory Group (DIAG)* who meet regularly with our staff to provide advice across Varuna’s programs and events. The DIAG have been instrumental in assisting us to develop our Disability Inclusion Action Plan (DIAP). You can read the DIAP here.
We offer a number of programs specifically for writers with disability, including The Writer’s Space Online and Residential Fellowships, The Writer’s Space Community Workshops and The Jerra Studio Fellowship.
To assist writers with disability decide about the feasibility of staying at Varuna, our Accessibility at Varuna FAQs are offered as an initial guide. You can download the FAQs as a word doc here.
If any information is missing, if you require information in another format, or if you have any questions at all, please get in touch at varuna@varuna.com.au and we can discuss your needs and options.
(*Please note whilst the DIAG provides expert advice to Varuna, the group is not an executive body and does not consider any matter outside its specific reference)
OUR DISABILITY INCLUSION ADVISORY GROUP INCLUDES
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Ursula King
Ursula is a researcher with an eclectic background. In the mix are community development, clinical medicine, sustainability, media/communications, epidemiology, humanities, and advocacy. Several decades juggling directorship of a national service sector consultancy, community-academic-industry partnering on international ecology/health projects, and a career as an emergency medicine doctor have now given way to writing. Ursula engages with essay, critique, experimental non/fiction, poetry and creative documentary, along with a side-hustle in food ecosystems research.
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Kerri Shying
Kerri Shying is a poet of Wiradjuri and Chinese family, winner of a NSW Writers’ Centre Emerging Writer Grant in 2017 with work appearing in Snap Journal, Cordite, Verity La, Ear to Earth, and Women of Words, 2016 and in The Australian Poetry Journal 2020. Author of the bilingual pocketbook of poems Sing out when you want me 2017, Flying Islands/ASM/Cerberus Press and the chapbook Elevensies Slow Loris, 2018, her current book is Knitting Mangrove Roots, 2019 Flying Island/ Cerberus/ASM. Shortlisted Helen Anne Bell and Noel Rowe Prizes in 2017, she won the Dr Eric Dark Flagship Fellowship for 2019 for her collection Know Your Country through Puncher and Wattman. Kerri has been convenor of the free disability-led writing collective, Write Up for 5 years and was a nominee for theaspireawards.com.au/2020.
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Sarah-Jane Staszak
Sarah-Jane Staszak has always been an adventurer and a passionate traveller. Most of her international pursuits are to skiing destinations, the highlight of many was the most recent heliskiing in Alaska. She has spent much of her early years peddling the wheels of her push bike through exotic places in central, south and the North Americas and sifting through the backroads of Australia for thousands of kilometres. These days Sarah-Jane cruises around on a slightly different set of wheels with her best friend and assistant, Cozie the black Labrador. Sarah-Jane is a Blackheath resident of the Blue Mountains and an adoring, proud mother of a growing young boy named Hamish.