2024 WestWords-Varuna Emerging Writers’ Residency Recipients Announced
WestWords and Varuna have once again partnered for the inaugural WestWords Varuna Emerging Writers’ residential program, offering four emerging writers from diverse backgrounds the opportunity of a six-day residency at Varuna.
Manuscripts were welcomed from writers in all creative forms, including fiction, drama, poetry, and narrative nonfiction. Two live-in mentors will join the writers, chosen in response to the successful candidates so that the mentorship is tailored specifically to their work.
Four residencies have been awarded to emerging writers from Western Sydney who display exceptional promise in their writing style and the premise of their work. We look forward to welcoming:
Ruth Larner
Ruth Larner is an Australian multidisciplinary writer of Sri Lankan and Afro-Caribbean descent. Her work explores mental health, creativity, motherhood, faith, identity and intergenerational trauma. She is working on her first novel How To Kill A Garden, a semi-biographical story set in New South Wales' idyllic Southern Highlands based on her experience of early motherhood and mental illness.
In 2023, Ruth was chosen to participate in the WestWords Academy program. During the program, she was mentored by Michelle Hamadache and also served as a judge for the Blacktown Mayoral Writing Competition. In 2024, she was a judge for the WestWords Living Stories writing competition. Ruth’s poetry has appeared in Australian Poetry Journal and The Suburban Reviews’s Hills Hoist publication. Her prose has twice been featured in the WestWords Living Stories Anthologies, winning the 2023 Living Stories writing competition in her LGA.
KT Major
KT Major is an emerging writer of crime fiction, literary fiction, and essays on Asian-Australian perspectives.
KT’s awards include winning the novice category at the 2022 Peter Cowan 600 Short Story Competition and the Resident’s Prize for Short Story in the 2023 Sutherland Shire Literary Competition. She was shortlisted for the Scarlet Stiletto Award in 2023 and longlisted for the Furphy Literary Award in 2024. An excerpt of KT’s first crime novel has been shortlisted for Uncharted Magazine’s 2024 Novel Excerpt Prize. An alum of the WestWords Academy, KT was a judge in the 2023 and 2024 WestWords Living Stories Writing Prize and the 2023 Blacktown Mayoral Creative Writing Prize. She made her festival debut at the 2023 Rose Scott Women Writers’ Festival.
Her work has been published in anthologies and magazines, including Grieve 2022, BAD Western Sydney, Emergence, The Big Issue, and Eucalypt: A Tanka Journal. KT is working on DARK OPERA, a crime novel that mixes genres and incorporates her experiences from Asia and Australia.
Lucia Tường Vy Nguyễn
Lucia Nguyễn is a Vietnamese Australian writer interested in exploring Southeast Asian folklore, ludic violence and global technoculture. Her writing has been featured in publications such as Kill Your Darlings, Runway Journal, Art Collector and LIMINAL’s non-fiction anthology, Against Disappearance (Pantera Press, 2022). Independently, she has been commissioned by galleries such as 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, Fairfield City Museum & Gallery and Pari (forthcoming). With her friend and collaborator Reina Takeuchi, she has exhibited at SomoS Art House Berlin and Outer Space Meanjin/Brisbane and co-written an essay for Going Down Swinging, which won the Non-Fiction category for the 2022 Woollahra Digital Literary Award. She is invigorated by the opportunity to play and dream within, around, or even outside capitalist structures of ‘work’.
Danielle Osifo
Danielle Osifo is an Australian-Nigerian writer and poet currently studying Media and Commerce at the University of New South Wales. In 2023, she became the Sydney final winner of the Australian Poetry Slam Competition. Her works explore contemporary themes of identity and belonging in the modern world whilst also navigating the ephemerality of life and relationships. Her experiences as a first-generation immigrant deeply influence her writing.
Danielle’s poetry has been featured in Australian Poetry, Unsweetened, and Framework. She is currently working on her first poetry book, Indigo Sun, a compelling exploration of the subtle apocalypse unfolding in our daily lives. In addition to writing, Danielle runs a blog called Offlinewonder, where she celebrates different mediums of art, such as film and oil paintings. Passionate about amplifying underrepresented voices in literature and the arts, Danielle aspires to continue her literary journey by exploring new genres and publishing works that resonate with diverse audiences around the world.
From left to right:
Ruth Larner, KT Major, Lucia Nguyễn, and Danielle Osifo, recipients of the 2024 Varuna WestWords Emerging Writers’ Residency