Express Media and the Kat Muscat Fellowship Committee are honoured to announce Dženana Vucic as the recipient of the 2021 Kat Muscat Fellowship, which offers support and development to a young Australian writer and/or editor of an underrepresented gender.

The 2021 Kat Muscat 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. Now in its sixth year, the Fellowship aims to continue Kat’s legacy and further develop the future of defiant and empathic young Australian feminists.

Dženana Vucic, the recipient of the 2021 Kat Muscat Fellowship, says: 

“I am so grateful to the Kat Muscat Custodial committee, the Muscat family, and Express Media for this incredible opportunity. Kat Muscat was involved in the first Express Media program I ever participated in and offered me support at the very start of my writing career. I am deeply honoured for this opportunity to create work that embodies ‘feminism, defiance and empathy’ just as she did.”

Dženana Vucic is a Bosnian-Australian writer, editor, and critic. Her poems and essays have been published in Cordite, Overland, Meanjin, SAND, Kill Your Darlings, Going Down Swinging, Australian Poetry Journal, the Australian Multilingual Writing Project, Rabbit, and others. She was also a 2020 Wheeler Centre Hot Desk Fellow.

Dženana says about her project: 

“I will be using my time as the 2021 Kat Muscat Fellow to work on an autotheoretical project, provisionally titled ‘A Teleology’ about identity, un/belonging, memory, myth- and history-making. It blends my experience as a refugee from the Bosnian war, shared mythologies, history and theory to interrogate how we tell stories about ourselves, as nations, groups and individuals, and challenges the immutability of those narratives. 

If all goes well, the Fellowship will allow me to travel to Bosnia to conduct interviews with family, friends and neighbours, visit historical sites like Srebrenica and Visegrad, and trace my family’s escape path. I will also use the funds to undertake Bosnian lessons online and, if I am unable to travel due to the pandemic, conduct extensive research from home and work towards completing a draft.”

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.

Chair of the Kat Muscat Custodial Committee, Veronica Sullivan, says:

“The Kat Muscat Fellowship custodial committee could not be more excited to announce Dženana Vucic as the 2021 Fellow. We were immediately gripped by Dženana’s project, a work of memoir and autotheory about identity, memory, and her family’s experiences as Bosnian refugees. We can’t wait for readers to be enthralled, informed, and challenged by the work Dženana produces during her time as the Fellow.”

We congratulate Dženana and look forward to working with her. We can’t wait to read 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.