The Writer’s Space Fellowships 2025 – Australia

They are looking for emerging or established writers with disability and/or are D/deaf who are developing new work. This could include literary fiction, genre fiction, narrative non-fiction, illustration and graphic novels, young adult fiction, junior fiction, poetry, or writing for screen, theatre or radio.

Assessors will be looking at the artistic merit of the work sample that you submit, your commitment to the writing craft, and how this Fellowship will benefit your professional development. Consideration will also be given to the impact a lack of access has had on your career development. Assessors of the program will be writers with disability.

Aim

• The aim of this program is to support writers who may have previously experienced barriers to developing their skills such as the lack of physical access, communication barriers, discrimination, or other people’s attitudes. This includes, but isn’t limited to, writers with sensory or physical conditions, hidden conditions, ongoing medical conditions, writers with cognitive or learning disability or mental health conditions.

Benefits

• Residency fellowships include:
  • A two-week residency at Varuna, including all food and a prepared evening meal, with uninterrupted time to write in your own private studio, and the companionship of your fellow writers.
  • Reimbursement of travel expenses between Varuna and your home.
  • Two one-hour sessions (one-on-one) with a Varuna writing consultant.

Eligibility Criteria

• Applicants need to be an Australian citizen or have a permanent residency visa, be over 18 years old and identify as a writer with disability or who is D/deaf. Recipients of the 2023 and 2024 Writer’s Space Fellowships are not able to apply in 2025.
• Recipients of a Writer’s Space Online Fellowship in any year are eligible to apply.

Application Requirements

• You will need to save your submission as a single PDF document. Please use the name of your project as the PDF submission name, ensuring the name of the file is 25 characters or less.
• Please note the following when formatting your work:
  • General: Submitted work should be predominantly in English.
  • Fonts: Ideally, your work should be in Times New Roman (font size 12).
  • Spacing: For long-form work (i.e. fiction or essays), it is helpful if you can use double-spacing and include generous margins of 3 cm on both left and right. However, when work is double-spaced, it can be hard discerning where one paragraph ends and another begins. For this reason, please indent the first line of each new paragraph.
  • Headers: Include an identifying title and the page number on the top-right-hand corner of each page.

For more information, visit Varuna the National Writers’ House.