Adalya Nash Hussein is the 2025 Kat Muscat Fellow!

Express Media and the Kat Muscat Fellowship Committee are thrilled to announce the recipient of the tenth and final Kat Muscat Fellowship is Adalya Nash Hussein.

Adalya Nash Hussein is a writer and editor. Her work has appeared in Meanjin, Overland, Liminal, Voiceworks, Going Down Swinging and others. It has also been shortlisted for the KYD Creative Nonfiction Essay Prize and the Scribe Nonfiction Prize. She has been the Editor of Voiceworks and The Victorian Writer, Managing Editor at Australian Poetry, a Co-Editor at Liminal, a Guest Editor of Debris Magazine and The Circular, Online Co-Editor of The Lifted Brow, and has edited zines of young writers from regional Victoria as Associate Producer of Express Media's Making Tracks program.

The Fellowship offers professional development up to the value of $5,000 for an editorial project or work of writing by a young person aged 16-30 of an underrepresented gender. Now in its tenth year, the Fellowship aims to continue Kat’s legacy and further develop the future of defiant and empathic young Australian writers and editors.

Hussein’s winning Fellowship project is to found Loom Lit Mag, a new national interdisciplinary print and digital literary journal, with editorial support from Hasib Hourani and Mira Schlosberg, and design by Selena Repanis.

On being named the 2025 Kat Muscat Fellow, Adalya says:

“I am honoured and delighted to have been awarded the 2025 Kat Muscat Fellowship. This fellowship will allow me to me to establish a new literary publication, alongside collaborators Hasib Hourani, Mira Schlosberg and Selena Repanis. Each of us has been hugely shaped by Voiceworks and Kat’s legacy as one of its most well-regarded editors, and we are honoured to take the ethics, experience and taste we were able to develop to a new publication of our own, where we seek to publish formally and thematically challenging work. A huge thank you to the Kat Muscat Custodial Committee, the Muscat family and Express Media for believing in and supporting this project.”

The tenth iteration of the Kat Muscat Fellowship marks a decade without the much loved and deeply influential young writer and editor, and ten years of brilliant literary projects realised through the Fellowship.

Family of Kat Muscat and members of the Kat Muscat Custodial Committee, Roz and Maddy Muscat, say:

“We are proud of the Fellowship's contribution to nurturing a generation of talent in Kat’s honour, continuing her legacy in meaningful and profound ways, realised in the literary projects and careers of brilliant young writers and editors. We are excited for the next phase of the Fellowship to support the talented young contributors of Voiceworks, who were so important to Kat’s life and work. It is with a deep sense of gratitude that we extend our thanks to the Kat Muscat Custodial Committee for their incredible work and dedication over these past ten years.”

This is the final year the Fellowship will be awarded in this structure before it evolves into its next chapter to support young writers and editors via Express Media and its flagship publication Voiceworks.

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 careers of young writers and editors from all around Australia.

The Kat Muscat Fellow is selected by the Custodial Committee of The Kat Muscat Fellowship, which includes members of Express Media’s board and staff, the Muscat family and appointed community members. Past recipients include Bri Lee (2016), Fury (2017), Ana Maria Gomides (2018), Liana Skrzypczak (2019), Maddie Godfrey (2020), Dženana Vucic (2021), Munira Tabassum Ahmed (2022), Taylor Mitchell (2023) and Xiaole Zhan (2024).

The Fellowship is made possible with the generous support of the community and the Muscat family. Donations can be made to continue Kat’s legacy and support the youth literary community.