ACT Writers and UNSW Canberra are excited to announce Peter Polites as 2020 ACT Writer-in-Residence.

Mr Polites is a writer of Greek descent from Western Sydney who has written and performed pieces all over Australia. His novels include The Pillars and Down the Hume. 

He will spend his time in Canberra working on a new novel, as well as delivering a public lecture – ‘Finding myself in the Special Collections and imagination as a political philosophy’.

“I haven't worked in a space with such resources on hand,” Mr Polites said. 

“Because the fiction that I will create will be exploring the Greek Civil War and the history of engineering, particularly hydroelectricity, the UNSW Canberra campus will be perfect.

Launched in 2017, the ACT Writer-in-Residence program provides writers with access to UNSW Canberra facilities. Each writer is encouraged to engage with students and researchers on campus, and reach out to the broader community through the ACT Writers.

Find out more about our 2020 Writer-in-Residence

Program Alumni

Angela Gardner (2019)

Angela Gardner is an award winning author and poet whose work has appeared in Meanjin, Poetry Wales, Brand Literary Magazine and Kenyon Review Online. Her work has also appeared on ABC Poetica and in print anthologies including The Best Australian Poems 2010 (Ed. Robert Adamson), Out of the Box (Ed. Jill Jones & Michael Farrell), In the Telling, Idiom23, Poetry Anthology; and Small Packages 8 Anthology (New Century Press).

“My month in Canberra was a fantastic time for me to catch up with collaborators Caren Florance and Nicci Haynes and to talk over ideas and projects. I spent some weekends in the letterpress studio at ANU and so was able to make prints particularly perfect machines, an oulipo look at the carbon exchange between plants and atmosphere. Ekphrasis is a natural mode and so it was great to be able to go to floor talks at Megalo and M16. I really appreciated being part of the ACT Writers Centre Workshop in September with Melinda Smith and others and spending time with her at the National Library. The Gorman Arts Centre is ideal to pop over to Smiths Alternative for That Poetry Thing each Monday (which I did each Monday) and indeed I also did a reading there on 23rd September. I was also able to catch up with my publisher Shane Strange at Recent Work Press, my next collection Some Sketchy Notes on Matter will now be published in April 2020 after a delay caused by a poem in The Yale Review that will be published March 2020 issue (Vol. 108, no. 1).” - Angela Gardner

Jane Gleeson-White (2018)

Jane Gleeson-White is the author of four books, including the internationally acclaimed Double Entry - a history of double-entry bookkeeping and its consequences today, especially for the earth’s living communities - and its sequel Six Capitals. She has a PhD in creative writing from the UNSW.

"I just can't speak more highly of this experience, and the depth of what it's given me was completely unexpected," - Jane Gleeson-White

Gleeson-White speaks about her WIR experience

“My month as ACT Writer-in-Residence gave me rare and invaluable time to research my new book Burnt Angels: The underwar about the impact of the 1942 Japanese invasion of Rabaul on three generations of Australian women. The resources provided by UNSW Canberra – a quiet, spacious office and extraordinary library – allowed me to do in four weeks what might otherwise have taken me a year. My host at UNSW Professor Nicole Moore gave me the warmest introduction and was always there to offer guidance and support. The other academics and the staff in the office, library and IT were also extremely helpful. The scholars, staff and students also gave me all sorts of serendipitous leads I would never have known to ask for. The ACT Writers Centre provided the Gorman Arts Centre’s Loft with its garden views and central location which I happily inhabited for a month. My contact there, Nigel Featherstone, was warm, welcoming and a fount of information. His colleagues were equally warm and helpful.”

- Jane Gleeson-White

Isobelle Carmody (2017)

Isobelle Carmody is the award winning author of the Obernewtyn Chronicles, a series she started at the age of fourteen. With two more series in progress and more planned, Isobelle's work reaches audiences around the world.

“The book I wanted to begin in Canberra was one I felt could be written with any urban location. I decided Canberra would be an interesting place to set it because, unlike most cities, it had not grown around and reflected the lives and aspirations of the people that built it but had been designed and built around certain ideals and ideas, for people to inhabit. I had the idea of looking into those ideals and I thought this would feed beautifully into my story about the desire of humans for meaning, and their ability to be seduced by
ideals. I quickly learned that Marion and Walter Burley Griffin had both ideals and some interesting beliefs. I was taken on various exploratory trips to locations I wanted to use in my book and I listened to people talk, always focusing of how people lived and how their
lives were shaped by Canberra. My time in Canberra was deeply fulfilling on many professional levels, but, most of all, it deepened my book and connected it to the real world. A writer could want no more.” - Isobelle Carmody