2024 Scribe Fellowship Announced
We are pleased to announce that this year’s selection of Scribe Varuna Fellowship recipients has been decided. Combining a Varuna residency with an intensive mentorship with Scribe editors, the 2024 program has a focus on non-fiction.
Varuna received 70 applications from writers across Australia for this year’s fellowship. The manuscripts were read by our assessors Veronica Gorrie and Briohny Doyle, and a shortlist as well as the complete set of applications were sent to the editorial team at Scribe Publications for their final selection.
The following writers were highly commended for their work: Jane Carrick, Tracy Ellis, Kate Larsen, Liz Porter, Edwina Shaw, Pip Smith, and Deborah Wardle.
We look forward to welcoming the four fellowship recipients at Varuna later this year. Congratulations to:
Anne So, Heart's Desires, Be Realised
Anne So holds a Graduate Diploma in Writing (University of Technology, Sydney) and is an alumna of the national Hardcopy Professional Development Program for Emerging Writers. Her interest is creative non-fiction and she has previously been awarded a Varuna Fellowship, Australian Society of Authors Mentorship, Carss Park Artist Residency and a Byron Bay Writers Festival Restart Residency, and was longlisted for the “Kill Your Darlings” Unpublished Manuscript Award.
Alex Karaconji, 52 Days
Alex Karaconji is a visual artist who’s practice encompasses painting, animation, and comics,. He is intrigued by the subtle drama of his life and environment in Sydney, most expansively expressed in his trilogy of animations traversing the city’s trammelled footpaths and newly constructed tramlines: Morning (2019); The Flaneur (2016); Night Works (2020). His work has featured in the Australian International Animation Festival, and has been a finalist in the Dobell Prize. He was also included in the curated exhibition From Here to There: Australian Art and Walking at Lismore Regional Gallery. His work has been collected across a range of private and public art collections including Artbank and City of Sydney.
Bianca Millroy, Caput Nebula (Head of Fog)
Bianca Millroy is a freelance writer and editor with over 20 works of short-form fiction and creative nonfiction published in journals such as Science Write Now, Writing Queensland, and Visible Ink. Bianca was a finalist for Queensland Literary Awards for an unpublished manuscript in 2020. She has contributed to and edited four anthologies, and is currently completing her PhD at The University of Queensland. Her thesis explores the intersections between creative practice and functional neurological disorder (FND). As a creative practitioner with FND, Bianca draws on lived experience to explore the ways in which creativity and the medical humanities can inform inclusive, patient-centred interactions and improve awareness of FND in Australia.
Sarina Singh, Gender Reveal: Baby Steps to Smashing the Patriarchy
Sarina Singh is a professional writer and producer with 20 years’ experience criss-crossing the world of marketing and advertising. She has also been a regular writer for parenting website Mum’s Grapevine for almost 10 years. Sarina has a Graduate Certificate of Writing, Editing and Publishing from the University of Queensland and was shortlisted for the 2022 Hardie Grant Spark Prize. A mother of two, Sarina is passionate about gender equality, especially when it comes to children.