Hot Desk Fellowships

The Wheeler Centre’s Hot Desk Fellowships are back for 2023 – once again made possible by the generous support of the Readings Foundation.

In total twenty-one writers will be offered fellowships throughout the year, including a Just Pretending Hot Desk Fellowship offered to a woman (cis or trans), or a non-binary person, who is an emerging playwright, generously supported by the Just Pretending theatre group.

This year, the stipend for each Hot Desk Fellow has increased from $1000 to $1250, in recognition of the increasing material pressures and financial precarity experienced by emerging writers.

These fellowships, which include the $1250 stipend and a dedicated workspace in the Wheeler Centre over a ten-week period, have been created to provide emerging writers with the space to write and create. Hot Desk fellows will also have the opportunity to meet, network and work with the Wheeler Centre’s resident organisations including Writers Victoria, Emerging Writers’ Festival, Australian Poetry, Express Media, Small Press Network and the Melbourne Writers Festival.

In addition, Hot Desk Fellowships introduce emerging writers and their work to the public – we will feature all our writers and their projects on our website, as well as in a special Hot Desk Edition of The Next Big Thing, our much loved event series.

Meet the 2023 Hot Desk Fellows