Event and Ticketing Details
Dates & Times
Monday 19 September
6:30 PM - 7:30 PM
About
The Wheeler Centre’s Hot Desk Fellowships are in full swing, and in this instalment of our ever-popular Next Big Thing series, we’re showcasing writers from the second intake of fellows. Grab a drink from the Moat bar and be the first to hear excerpts from these exciting projects-in-progress.
Featuring Kasumi Borczyk, Sophie Tegan Gardiner, Savannah Indigo, Ren Jiang and Wen-Juenn Lee, these works – ranging from creative non-fiction to fiction, poetry and screenplay – have all been refined over the writers’ ten-week fellowships.
Unfortunately J.R. Burgmann and Art Owens are no longer able to appear at this event.
The Wheeler Centre Hot Desk Fellowships are supported by the Readings Foundation and Just Pretending theatre group.
The Next Big Thing
The Next Big Thing takes place every month at the Moat and is a cherished Melbourne institution. It’s the place to be if you want to hear great emerging writers read from new and adventurous work.
Featuring
Kasumi Borczyk
Kasumi Borczyk is a writer whose work has been published in The Independent, Rolling Stone, Damage Mag, Griffith Review and Meanjin, among others
View ProfileSophie Tegan Gardiner
Sophie Tegan Gardiner is a writer and editor originally from Aotearoa. Their work has previously been published in Going Down Swinging, Starling and Meanjin, among others. They are an online editor at Going Down Swinging, and a Wheeler Centre Hot Desk Fellow for 2022.
View Profile
Savannah Indigo
Savannah Indigo is a bookseller, copywriter and law student based in Naarm/Melbourne. She is passionate about gender issues, promoting equality through tech design and unexpected facts about space. Her essay ‘Cheering on the Boys’ in Balancing Acts: Women in Sport (Brow Books) explored gendered power imbalances in cheerleading. She has since written for Books+Publishing magazine, The Journal of Supernatural Literature (Deakin University) and the Science and Technology Law Association.
View Profile
Ren Jiang
Ren Jiang (they/she) is a Chinese writer, editor, and theatre/filmmaker based on unceded Wurundjeri country. Their work has been featured by, or is forthcoming with the Australian Poetry Journal, the Melbourne Theatre Company, the Australian Multilingual Writing Project, Cordite Poetry Review, and more. They have been a poetry editor at Voiceworks, and a Wheeler Centre Hot Desk Fellow. They are currently occupied with chasing ancestral echoes across lands, soundtracked by dreamscapes, city pop, and queer yearning.
Wen-Juenn Lee
Wen-Juenn is a poet and editor who lives on unceded Wurundjeri land. In her writing, she is interested in gaps, leaks and spillage; in the things that create and betray boundaries. Leaks often take the form of place, memory, and the body in her work.
Her writing has been published or is forthcoming in Cordite, Landfall, Southerly, Scum Mag, and Going Down Swinging. She previously served as a poetry editor at Voiceworks.
Veronica Sullivan
Veronica Sullivan is the Wheeler Centre’s Head of Programming.
She is a board member of Overland literary journal and a member of the Custodial Committee of the Kat Muscat Fellowship. Previously, she was a board member and Program Manager of the Feminist Writers Festival, Prize Manager of the Stella Prize, and Online Editor of Kill Your Darlings. Veronica co-founded and co-hosted Sisteria, a podcast about women and non-binary creatives' experiences as creators and consumers of arts and culture.
Veronica was a regular columnist for Books+Publishing magazine in 2020, writing on the Australian publishing industry, and her literary criticism and other writing have been published by the Guardian, Overland, Kill Your Darlings, the Review of Australian Fiction and the Lifted Brow, among others. She holds a Masters in Creative Writing, Publishing and Editing from the University of Melbourne.
View Profile