Creative Writing Discipline

Graham Akhurst is an Aboriginal writer and academic hailing from the Kokomini of Northern Queensland. His research sits in the discipline of Creative Writing, Australian Literature, and Australian Publishing Studies. Graham is currently the Director of Indigenous Studies and a Senior Lecturer of Indigenous Australian Studies and Creative Writing in the Faculty of Design and Society. Graham was a finalist in the 2024 NAIDOC Awards in the catagory of Creative of the Year. His debut novel Borderland was published in October 2023 by The University of Western Australia Press and recieved the following accolades:

2025 Finalist NSW Literary Awards. Glenda Adams Award for New Writing for Borderland. 

2024 Finalist for Work of State Significance QLD Literary Awards for Borderland.

2024 Finalist for Young Adult Book of the Year QLD Literary Awards for Borderland.

2024 Finalist for Best Horror Book of the Year Aurealis Awards for Borderland.

2024 Finalist Best YA Book of the Year Aurealis Awards for Borderland.

2024 Finalist Adaptable Program Queensland Writers Centre.

2024 Children’s Book Council of Australia ‘Notable’ book for Borderland. 

Graham's research has been published as a book chapter in Indigenous Postgraduate Education: Intercultural Perspectives, and has articles in The Australian Journal of Indigenous Education, and Artlines. He is a contributing editor at Kweli Journal, New York City. He is a board member of The Sydney Review of Books and Varuna. He has published creatively in Kweli and J Journal for fiction, Mascara Literary Review and Westerly for creative non-fiction, and the Australian Book Review, Cordite, VerityLa, Off the Coast (Maine America), Red Ink (Arizona State University Press), Australian Poetry Journal, Artlines, Meanjin, and Island Magazine for poetry. His short story ‘Staffy’ was nominated for the 2022 PEN Dau Award, Best American Short Stories, O. Henry Prize, and Pushcart Prize. He was the poet of the week for the Australian Book Review in early April 2016. Graham has been a featured reader at the Queensland Poetry Festival, Clancestry, Woodford Folk Festival, UQ Art Museum, Queensland Art Gallery, Ruckus Slam, Dark Mofo, Sydney Writers Festival, Perth Writers Festival, Byron Writers Festival, Scribblers Festival, Brisbane Writers Festival, Singapore Writers Festival and Dhaka Literary Festival and the American Australian Association Arts Gala (2019) amoung many others. He was a participant of the Australia Council for the Arts Future Leaders Program in 2018. Graham was a participant on the Aurora International Study Tour in 2015. He was valedictorian of his graduating year at The University of Queensland (2014) and completed his writing honours with a first-class result at UQ (2015). He has an MPhil in Creative Writing from UQ funded by an APA scholarship (2019), and is a current PhD candidate at The University of Sydney. Graham has previously been a faculty member at The University of Queensland, teaching Indigenous Studies. He was named the first Indigenous recipient of the Fulbright W.G Walker Award as the highest-ranked postgraduate Australian applicant. The Fulbright Award funded his studies at Hunter College, CUNY, where he was awarded an MFA in Fiction (2021). He also received the Nomad Two Worlds Foundation Indigenous Arts Scholarship from the American Australian Association and a second Australia Council of the Arts Grant for Professional Development. He is also the recipient of a Roberta Sykes Scholarship, the Ian Potter Cultural Foundation Scholarship, and a Creative Writing Scholarship from Hunter College.

Sarah is an Associate Professor in the School of Communication and Social Sciences in the Faculty of Design and Society and teaches creative writing and communication interdisciplinary elective subjects.

Sarah's scholarly work is focused on social class in popular culture and literature, particularly the representation of working-class life. She has published on working-class representation in global cinema, literature, and popular music such as UK grime, dubstep, hardcore punk and Australian hip hop.

Sarah is also a poet and her poetry (which focuses on working-class experience) has been published widely in Australian literary journals and she has performed her poetry in a variety of venues across Australia as well as in the US and UK.

Sarah is the co-founding editor of the Journal of Working-Class Studies (with Dr. Liz Giuffre) and a regular contributor to the Working-Class Perspectives blog.

Dr Dave Drayton is a writer of poetry, creative nonfiction and fiction. His work includes P(oe)Ms, published by Rabbit Poetry; British P(oe)Ms, published by Beir Bua (Ireland); and the novella E, UIO, A, published by Container (US). 

In 2015, Dave received his PhD at the University of Technology Sydney, where he has taught into writing and communications subjects. He has appeared at the the Newcastle Writers' Festival, National Young Writers' Festival, Perth Poetry Festival, and has given papers at the Australian Association of Writing Programs and International Association for Literary Journalism Studies. His writing has appeared in Meanjin, The Sydney Review of Books, The Lifted Brow, Australian Poetry Journal, and other publications.  

His research interests include: Creative Practice, Writing To Constraint, Oulipo, Poetry, Experimental Translation

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