creative writing university of sydney

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English & creative writing

English and creative writing at UNSW School of the Arts & Media houses a passionate group of writers and scholars working in diverse fields. Our research consistently achieves high rankings. In the latest (2018) Excellence for Research in Australia (ERA) assessment, we scored 5 for creative writing (well above world standard) and 4 for literary studies (above world standard). 

Our internationally renowned researchers produce monographs, novels, poetry collections, edited collections and essays in major international journals. We attract significant external funding from the Australia Council and Australian Research Council (ARC). We also receive support from international funding bodies such as the Research England Development Fund, the Canadian Humanities and Social Sciences Research Council, the Swedish Research Council and the Flemish Research Foundation (FWO). 

Our academics include the presidents of the Australasian Association for Literature and the Association for the Study of the Australian Literature (ASAL), the incoming president of the International Society for the Study of Narrative, as well as past and present executive members of the Australian University Heads of English.

English and creative writing at UNSW Sydney is home to a thriving postgraduate research culture, with a strong record of successful completions in a broad range of areas. We particularly welcome research proposals in any of the fields below. 

Research strengths

UNSW School of the Arts & Media is the largest hub globally for research in Australian literature. We address the global dimensions of Australian writing, including diasporic and expatriate writing, writing by refugees and asylum seekers, Indigenous writers alongside continuing engagement with more foundational works. 

Among our many recent publications are monographs on Christina Stead and America, and on literary islands and colonialism, as well as edited collections on the works of Elizabeth Harrower, Antigone Kefala and Shirley Hazzard. Our academics include the president and two former presidents of the peak scholarly body ASAL. We also host Southerly, Australia’s oldest literary journal. 

The large and constant flow of local and international postgraduate students expand and invigorate our research strength in contemporary studies in Australian literature. Our many institutional and publishing activities create a wealth of opportunities for our students’ academic and professional development. 

We welcome enquiries about higher degree research (HDR) supervision across all areas of Australian literature. Recent projects include: queer Australian masculinities; the Australian girl; contemporary Indigenous women’s writing; sound and Australian literature; Brian Castro and weird English; Indigenous speculative writing and ecopoetics; Australia and utopia; studies of Antigone Kefala and Eleanor Dark; and a biography of Marjorie Barnard. 

UNSW School of the Arts & Media has a long history of excellence in modernist studies. Our research spans a wide variety of topics within the broad field of modernist studies, including modernist poetics, the modernist novel, modernist periodical studies, and modernism and media. 

Our research addresses the formal experiments and political meanings of modernism’s responses to and critiques of global modernity. Recent publications include edited collections on modernism and sound, modernism and technology, and modernism and work. Our academics also regularly publish articles on modernist and modernism-adjacent subjects in leading journals. Among our academics are the treasurer of the Australasian Modernist Studies Network and two editors of the network’s journal Affirmations: of the modern.

Our school welcomes research proposals on all aspects of modernist literature and culture. Recent projects include: studies of rhythm in modernist short fiction; philosophical poetry in a time of crisis; bodily experience in the writing of Virginia Woolf; architectural subjectivity in the fiction of Elizabeth Bowen, Jean Rhys and Christina Stead; and ‘textual becoming’ in Proust.

UNSW School of the Arts & Media’s renowned literary historical research fosters interdisciplinary dialogues between literature and artificial intelligence, literature and visual culture, literature and sound, literature and the history of political struggle, book history and literary biography.  

Our research includes work on historical poetics and the historical development of the novel, with a strong focus on archival research. Work includes an editorial project on Charlotte Bronte and a large collaborative project on ‘Rioting and the literary archive’, which traces literature’s enduring engagement with forms of popular resistance and riotous assembly. 

Recent publications include a range of monographs and edited collections, as well as pieces in major international journals, such as ELH, NLH, Textual Practice, Victorian Studies, Modernism/Modernity, Studies in the Novel, and NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction. Our academics have edited special issues of Poetics Today, on narrative theory and the history of the novel, and of Critical Quarterly, on historical poetics and the problem of exemplarity. Forthcoming publications include an edited collection on ‘Writing the global riot: literature in a time of crisis’, the ‘Edinburgh companion to literary sound studies’ and the authorised biography of Australian-US author Shirley Hazzard. UNSW is also home to the  Juvenilia Press .  

Postgraduate supervision encompasses diverse areas of literary history, ranging from single-author studies to more expansive thematic and historical approaches. Projects include: studies of voice in the 19th-century novel; literary precarity; reading domestic spaces; Thomas Chatterton and the performance of literary professionalism; writer characters in fiction from the 1890s to the present; the Anthropocene in science fiction; time and empathy in cognitive literary criticism; and the sonic animal in 19th-century fiction. 

UNSW School of the Arts & Media has a strong focus on literary theory and literary approaches to philosophy. Our researchers are experts in queer theory, feminism, narratology, postcolonial theory, animal studies, ecocriticism, Lacanian psychoanalysis, Derridean and de Manian deconstruction and Deleuze studies. We engage with figures as diverse as Søren Kierkegaard, Alain Badiou, Maurice Blanchot, Bruno Latour, Peter Sloterdijk, Jacques Derrida, Sigmund Freud, G. W. F. Hegel, Jacques Rancière, Slavoj Žižek and Jacques Lacan.  

The work of our academics has appeared in monographs and journals such as symploke, Substance, Angelaki, Continental Philosophy Review, Filozofski vestnik and Crisis & Critique. We also engage in large international and national research projects investigating literary and critical climate change. Forthcoming publications include the ‘Routledge companion to narrative theory’ which locates the novel in the context of the larger multidisciplinary study of narrative, and a special issue of S: Journal on the work of the contemporary French philosopher Barbara Cassin. 

UNSW School of the Arts & Media’s research in world literatures spans the fields of postcolonial, diasporic and transnational literary studies. Australia’s settler colonial history means we engage in ways that contribute to and shape the dynamic fields of postcolonial and transnational writing. We focus on works in English, in translation and in other languages. One key question is: What do we do with texts when they circulate outside their context of origin?  

From the deployment of big data to close textual analysis, our research examines both the aesthetics and politics of literary representation in context, as well as the modes of literary production and the circulations of literature in globalised modernity.  

We’re interested in the networks of Australia’s diverse writing cultures and the circulation of their work in global contexts. Our publications range from colonialist histories and imaginaries to the production and circulation of contemporary Iranian literature, to questions of trans-Indigenous writing and representation.  

Recent and forthcoming monographs by our academics include Christina Stead and America, the imaginary geographies of colonialism and Iranian literature since the revolution. Themed issues of Southerly include the writing of detained refugees, the Persian diaspora, the inter-generational legacies of migration in Australia and the mobility of textual circulation. 

We have many local and international postgraduate students working on topics ranging from Irish-language poetics to Iranian women’s romance fiction, to contemporary African fiction. Our school is a long-standing sponsor of the Institute of World Literature (Harvard University) and UNSW academics and postgraduate students regularly participate in the institute’s summer programs. PhD projects include: post-Independence African novels; psychogeography and the novel; domestic violence in postcolonial writing; and Irish women’s writing. 

Creative writing at UNSW School of the Arts & Media is a dynamic program, boasting researchers who are award-winning novelists and poets. Our academics have won numerous prizes including the Literary Fiction Book of the Year in the Australian Book Industry Awards, the Readings Prize for New Australian Fiction and the Best Young Australian Novelist award. They have also been shortlisted for the Victorian and NSW Premier’s Awards and the Newcastle Poetry Prize. 

We have judged major prizes such as the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards and the ALS Gold Medal. We publish creative work in Australia’s top literary journals such as Meanjin, Overland, Island, Westerly, Southerly, Cordite Poetry Review and Australian Poetry Journal. 

Our researchers are committed to public and cultural engagement and frequently collaborate with the broader publishing industry and media outlets. We have longstanding relationships with the Adelaide International Festival, Tasmanian Writers’ Festival, Perth Writers’ Festival, Asialink, Varuna, The Writers’ House and the Oxford Centre for Life Writing at Wolfson College, Oxford University. 

Editing and publishing at the School of the Arts & Media plays a leading role in the dissemination of traditional and non-traditional research. We explore new forms of scholarly communication as editors and editorial board members of academic journals such as Affirmations, Southerly, S: Journal, Continental Thought & Theory, Journal of World Literature and Iranian Studies. 

We promote strong international outreach through our founding role in Open Humanities Press, which publishes open-access journals and books in a variety of humanities fields. Bernard Stiegler, Timothy Morton, Claire Colebrook, Joanna Zylinska and Isabelle Stengers, among others, have been published recently. 

Southerly magazine is Australia’s oldest literary journal and publishes scholarly work on Australian literature alongside creative fiction and prose. Southerly is particularly notable among Australia’s literary journals for publishing more fiction and poetry, and it also publishes essays, commentary and reviews. The themed component of each issue is often prompted by research interests of UNSW academics including intergenerational migrant writing; Utopian fiction; writing by refugees in Australian detention centres; and transnational writing cultures of the Persian diaspora in Australia. 

Our academics are also working on Live Crossings , an online open-access creative practice magazine publishing work by refugees and asylum-seekers as well as Indigenous writers and artists.

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TEDxSydney reworks 2024 creative program with the University of Sydney

TEDxSydney has shared a reworked creative program for 2024, via a partnership with the University of Sydney.

The announcement:

TEDxSydney, the leading platform for Australian creativity and thought leadership, unveils a revised 2024 creative program in partnership with the University of Sydney. This will see the TEDxSydney annual flagship event replaced by two specially-curated, intimate events designed to cater to the evolving interests of Australians. The popular TEDxSydney Youth event will now be supported by two TEDxSydney Salons, an intimate evening event format which TEDxSydney CEO, Susan McMahon, says allows Australians to connect more deeply on specific topics with like-minded people across industries. Susan McMahon, CEO of TEDxSydney says, “We know our community is seeking connection through tailored experiences. We also acknowledge that the Australian live events landscape more broadly is evolving. Our long-term strategic goal is to provide a platform for meaningful discussion and facilitate the exchange of ideas that drive action, innovation and leadership. We’re excited to see what evolutionary opportunities this new, refreshed approach will bring to the individuals and thought leaders shaping Australia’s contemporary society and the future.” The first TEDxSydney Salon on 27 June will focus on ‘Net Zero’ emphasising sustainability and environmental responsibility in partnership with Presenting Partner, the University of Sydney. Professor Mark Scott, vice-chancellor and president of The University of Sydney says, “We are proud to once again partner with TEDxSydney in 2024 to facilitate the exchange of ideas, creativity, and innovation for the global good. The University of Sydney and TEDxSydney share an ambition to solve the greatest challenges of our time by bringing together brilliant minds from diverse backgrounds in pursuit of a better world. We look forward to exploring the opportunities presented by net zero and artificial intelligence, and hearing the unique perspectives of future generations.” Sydney-siders can also mark their calendars for the TEDxSydney Youth event, curated by young visionaries and uniquely designed to inspire an intergenerational audience, on 29 August in Parramatta. A second Salon will delve into ‘Advancements in Artificial Intelligence’, exploring the ethical implications of innovations in AI, with dates to be confirmed later this year. Australians can sign up now to learn more about TEDxSydney events, including the first Salon: ● Event: TEDxSydney Salon ● Theme: Net Zero ● Time: Evening, exact time to be announced. ● Duration: 2 hours ● Date: 27 June 2024 ● Venue: Big Top at Luna Park Sydney ● Pricing: Concession Registration starting from $39.50, Standard Registration from $49.50 ● Registration: Sign up now to be the first to know when tickets go on sale later this month: https://tedxsydney.com/

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Creative Writing Program Marks Three Decades of Growth, Diversity

By Luisa A. Igloria

2024: a milestone year which marks the 30 th  anniversary of Old Dominion University’s MFA Creative Writing Program. Its origins can be said to go back to April 1978, when the English Department’s (now Professor Emeritus, retired) Phil Raisor organized the first “Poetry Jam,” in collaboration with Pulitzer prize-winning poet W.D. Snodgrass (then a visiting poet at ODU). Raisor describes this period as “ a heady time .” Not many realize that from 1978 to 1994, ODU was also the home of AWP (the Association of Writers and Writing Programs) until it moved to George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia.

The two-day celebration that was “Poetry Jam” has evolved into the annual ODU Literary Festival, a week-long affair at the beginning of October bringing writers of local, national, and international reputation to campus. The ODU Literary Festival is among the longest continuously running literary festivals nationwide. It has featured Rita Dove, Maxine Hong Kingston, Susan Sontag, Edward Albee, John McPhee, Tim O’Brien, Joy Harjo, Dorothy Allison, Billy Collins, Naomi Shihab Nye, Sabina Murray, Jane Hirshfield, Brian Turner, S.A. Cosby, Nicole Sealey, Franny Choi, Ross Gay, Adrian Matejka, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Ilya Kaminsky, Marcelo Hernandez Castillo, Jose Olivarez, and Ocean Vuong, among a roster of other luminaries. MFA alumni who have gone on to publish books have also regularly been invited to read.

From an initial cohort of 12 students and three creative writing professors, ODU’s MFA Creative Writing Program has grown to anywhere between 25 to 33 talented students per year. Currently they work with a five-member core faculty (Kent Wascom, John McManus, and Jane Alberdeston in fiction; and Luisa A. Igloria and Marianne L. Chan in poetry). Award-winning writers who made up part of original teaching faculty along with Raisor (but are now also either retired or relocated) are legends in their own right—Toi Derricotte, Tony Ardizzone, Janet Peery, Scott Cairns, Sheri Reynolds, Tim Seibles, and Michael Pearson. Other faculty that ODU’s MFA Creative Writing Program was privileged to briefly have in its ranks include Molly McCully Brown and Benjamín Naka-Hasebe Kingsley.

"What we’ve also found to be consistently true is how collegial this program is — with a lively and supportive cohort, and friendships that last beyond time spent here." — Luisa A. Igloria, Louis I. Jaffe Endowed Professor & University Professor of English and Creative Writing at Old Dominion University

Our student body is diverse — from all over the country as well as from closer by. Over the last ten years, we’ve also seen an increase in the number of international students who are drawn to what our program has to offer: an exciting three-year curriculum of workshops, literature, literary publishing, and critical studies; as well as opportunities to teach in the classroom, tutor in the University’s Writing Center, coordinate the student reading series and the Writers in Community outreach program, and produce the student-led literary journal  Barely South Review . The third year gives our students more time to immerse themselves in the completion of a book-ready creative thesis. And our students’ successes have been nothing but amazing. They’ve published with some of the best (many while still in the program), won important prizes, moved into tenured academic positions, and been published in global languages. What we’ve also found to be consistently true is how collegial this program is — with a lively and supportive cohort, and friendships that last beyond time spent here.

Our themed studio workshops are now offered as hybrid/cross genre experiences. My colleagues teach workshops in horror, speculative and experimental fiction, poetry of place, poetry and the archive — these give our students so many more options for honing their skills. And we continue to explore ways to collaborate with other programs and units of the university. One of my cornerstone projects during my term as 20 th  Poet Laureate of the Commonwealth was the creation of a Virginia Poets Database, which is not only supported by the University through the Perry Library’s Digital Commons, but also by the MFA Program in the form of an assistantship for one of our students. With the awareness of ODU’s new integration with Eastern Virginia Medical School (EVMS) and its impact on other programs, I was inspired to design and pilot a new 700-level seminar on “Writing the Body Fantastic: Exploring Metaphors of Human Corporeality.” In the fall of 2024, I look forward to a themed graduate workshop on “Writing (in) the Anthropocene,” where my students and I will explore the subject of climate precarity and how we can respond in our own work.

Even as the University and wider community go through shifts and change through time, the MFA program has grown with resilience and grace. Once, during the six years (2009-15) that I directed the MFA Program, a State Council of Higher Education for Virginia (SCHEV) university-wide review amended the guidelines for what kind of graduate student would be allowed to teach classes (only those who had  already  earned 18 or more graduate credits). Thus, two of our first-year MFA students at that time had to be given another assignment for their Teaching Assistantships. I thought of  AWP’s hallmarks of an effective MFA program , which lists the provision of editorial and publishing experience to its students through an affiliated magazine or press — and immediately sought department and upper administration support for creating a literary journal. This is what led to the creation of our biannual  Barely South Review  in 2009.

In 2010,  HuffPost  and  Poets & Writers  listed us among “ The Top 25 Underrated Creative Writing MFA Programs ” (better underrated than overrated, right?) — and while our MFA Creative Writing Program might be smaller than others, we do grow good writers here. When I joined the faculty in 1998, I was excited by the high caliber of both faculty and students. Twenty-five years later, I remain just as if not more excited, and look forward to all the that awaits us in our continued growth.

This essay was originally published in the Spring 2024 edition of Barely South Review , ODU’s student-led literary journal. The University’s growing MFA in Creative Writing program connects students with a seven-member creative writing faculty in fiction, poetry, and nonfiction.

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