Express Media is honoured to announce Ana Maria Gomides as the winner of the 2018 Kat Muscat Fellowship.

The annual Kat Muscat Fellowship offers professional development up to the value of $3,000 for an editorial project or work of writing by a young female-identifying or non-binary person.

Now in its third year, the Fellowship aims to continue Kat’s legacy and further develop the future of defiant and empathic young Australian writers and editors.

Photo credit Rebecca-Marian Irene / IG: @rebeccamarianirene

Ana Maria, the winner of the 2018 Fellowship, says:

I am so grateful to have been offered this profoundly meaningful fellowship. Kat was a fierce person, editor, writer and activist. Being given the opportunity to contribute to her legacy is an honour that fuels the fire in my belly and my resolve to create something great.

Kat Muscat was a brilliant young mind of the Australian writing community, whose formidable talent was demonstrated through her incisive writing and perceptive editing. Kat was an integral part of Express Media for many years, before becoming Editor of Voiceworks from 2012 to 2014. Throughout her 10 years with Express Media, Kat helped to shape the career of young writers and editors from all around Australia.

The Kat Muscat Fellow is selected by the Custodial Committee of The Kat Muscat Legacy Projects, which includes members of Express Media’s board and staff, the Muscat family and appointed community members.

Ana Maria says about her project:

My vision is to create a book compilation of short stories, personal essays, and narrative non-fiction, that highlight our intergenerational experiences of womanhood, trauma and dispossession – but also of defiance, joy and triumph. We are Latinx, Black, Brown, First Nations Brazilian, and migrant women; some of us are queer, some mentally ill. […] I call my project Strange and Bitter Crop […] My hope is that one day Strange and Bitter Crop reaches the hands of a secondary student in Australia and she, too, is catapulted into her own journey of the Self. 

We look forward to working with Ana Maria and can’t wait for the incredible work she will produce!

The Fellowship is made possible with the generous support of the community and the Muscat family.

For information on The Kat Muscat Fellowship, find us here.

For media enquiries, please contact Frankie Hanman Siegersma |Administrator and Communications Coordinator | 03 9094 7889 | marketing@expressmedia.org.au