Dr Delia Falconer is the author of two novels (The Service of Clouds and The Lost Thoughts of Soldiers) and two works of nonfiction (Sydney and Signs and Wonders: Dispatches from a time of beauty and loss), which have been shortlisted for national and international awards across the categories of fiction, nonfiction, innovation, biography, history and research. She is the editor of three cohort-defining collections: The Best Australian Stories 2008, The Best Australian Stories 2009 and The Penguin Book of the Road.  Delia's short stories and essays have been widely anthologised, including in the landmark Macquarie PEN Anthology of Australian Literature and The Penguin Century of Australian Stories. She has received grants and residencies from the Australia Council, the Marten Bequest Travelling Scholarship, Varuna and Bundanon, and the Tyrone Guthrie Centre in Ireland. 

Since 2010 Delia has specialised in writing and teaching creative nonfiction and in 2019 was awarded a citation in the UTS Teaching and Learning Awards for her development of creative nonfiction across the UTS Writing program. In 2018 she was awarded a Walkley Award for Art Criticism, in Australia's major journalism awards, for work exploring the ways that contemporary writers have responded to species loss. Her most recent book, Signs and Wonders, a collection of hybrid lyric and personal essays exploring the 'anthropocene uncanny,' was awarded the Mark and Evette Moran Nib Literary Award in 2022 for the best Australian book of fiction or nonfiction combining excellence in writing and research. In 2022 she was an invited panellist at the Edinburgh International Culture Summit's Australia/UK Cultural Leadership Dialogue, to speak about using the affordances of creative nonfiction in her work to engage with the current climate crisis.

Since 2022, Delia has been a member of the National Library of Australia's Fellowships Advisory Committee and Chair of its Creative Arts Fellowships sub-committee. Delia is also engaged with the publishing industry as a judge for numerous awards. Her services to the publishing industry have included acting as a judge for the Stella Prize, Age Book of the Year, the Australian Book Review Calibre Essay Prize, the NSW Premier's Literary Awards, and the Prime Minister's Literary Awards. She is a frequent peer advisor for funding bodies, including Creative Australia, Copyright Agency, and the Australian Society of Authors' fellowships. For the last 5 years, she has run the Copyright Agency-UTS New Writer in Residence fellowship with funding from the Copyright Agency's Cultural Fund to support a writer working on a second or third book within the discipline: recent recipients include Yuwaalaraay storyteller Nardi Simpson, novelist Vivian Pham and essayist Eda Gunaydin. Delia brings this industry knowledge to her teaching and to her role at UTS as a member of the FASS NTRO advisory committee. 

Delia has also engaged with industry in governance roles, including board membership of Varuna: the National Writer's House and the Advisory Committee for Adelaide Writers' Week. 

As a supervisor, Delia is passionate about the possibilities of interdisciplinary, practice-led research, particularly with an Anthropocene or environmental focus. In addition to supervising works of creative nonfiction and fiction, she is especially interested in projects that are multidisciplinary, or non-traditional, and in co-supervisions that incorporate creative methodologies into areas of traditional research. In 2024 her PhD student Sinead Roarty's PhD, a binaural VR soundwork and thesis engaging with the complex and unresolved layers of violence at Sydney's Gap, was the Faculty's choice for inclusion on the UTS Chancellor's List 2024 for 'exceptional scholarly achievement in PhD research.'

Delia's current research projects include a novel-as-triptych set at different historical points of environmental crisis and awareness and collaborative research with colleagues in Design and History into storytelling that connects audiences in new ways to collections in the GLAM sector.

Memberships:

• UTS Creative Practice Research Group
• Australian Association of Writing Programs
• Australian Society of Authors
• Deans and Directors of Creative Arts
• Varuna Alumni