Adelaide writer Stephen Orr, for his work The Journey, which will be a fictionalised reimagining of pastor Carl Strehlow and his fourteen-year-old son, Theodor, as they travel through the South Australian desert. Orr will examine the country, the Indigenous people and the history of the Lutheran missions, and explore the nature of hope, and the danger of good intentions.
2019 Non-Fiction Fellow
Sydney author and critic James Bradley, for Deep Water, a series of interconnected essays that will offer an engaging portrait of the catastrophe taking place in our oceans, from plastic pollution to warming. It will probe not just the way we imagine the ocean, but also pose a series of much larger questions about our relationship with the natural world, time and extinction.
2019 Visual Artist Fellow
Western Australian Danielle Freakley will make the virtual-reality piece, “Imagine Your Friends”, which will be exhibited in a solo exhibition at the performance space HERE Art Centre in New York. Freakley’s recent artworks on parasocial relationships have been exhibited at the Tate, Liverpool Biennial, Seychelles Biennial, Kunstahalle Zurich and others. The new digital work she is proposing widely questions imaginary friend function throughout history and in current everyday lives offline and online.
2019 Reading Australia Fellow for Teachers of English and Literacy
Alex Wharton (the Head of Middle School, English Teacher from Carinya Christian School in Gunnedah, NSW) will explore best practice around teaching Indigenous literature in the classroom to develop a greater understanding of the issues, protocols and sensitivities involved. He will share what he has learnt with the wider teaching community.
2019 Publisher Fellow
Justin Ractliffe (formerly Managing Director of Hachette Australia and now Publishing Director at Penguin Random House Australia) will travel to the biggest book market in the world, the United States, to research how publishers can gain greater consumer insights through digital data. He will specifically visit New York and the Netflix headquarters in Los Gatos, California.
