Express Media and the Kat Muscat Fellowship Committee are thrilled to announce Taylor Mitchell as the recipient of the 2023 Kat Muscat Fellowship, which offers support and development to a young Australian writer and/or editor of an underrepresented gender.

The 2023 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 seventh year, the Fellowship aims to continue Kat’s legacy and further develop the future of defiant and empathic young Australian feminists.

Taylor Mitchell, the recipient of the 2023 Kat Muscat Fellowship, says:

‘I am very excited to be named the 2023 Kat Muscat Fellow. Thank you so much to the Kat Muscat Custodial committee, the Muscat family, and Express Media. I appreciate and take very seriously their support of this project and the opportunity to contribute to Kat Muscat’s legacy.

In writing my debut novel, The Prototype, I am interested in the implications of “hope” within the climate crisis and how it is often placed in the interdisciplinary promise of art, science and nature. Such a world-in-flux contains not only the possibility of more liveable futures but also a violently green “sustainable” capitalism and rising ecofascism—a world The Prototype seeks to engage in its eerie contradictions.

The fellowship funding will allow me to work closely with Jamie Marina Lau and Jessica White throughout the editing process—two authors I greatly admire whose writing and collaborative approaches embody Kat’s mantra of defiance, feminism and empathy.’

Taylor writes essays and fiction. Her work has been published in Griffith Review, Overland and Kill Your Darlings, and she was named runner-up of the Kill Your Darlings’ New Critic Award in 2022. Previously the art program manager at the Environmental Film Festival Australia, she is currently the editorial assistant at Science Write Now and a research assistant examining moving image works critiquing colonial constructions of the so-called-Australian environment.

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, Elizabeth Flux, says:

“The Kat Muscat Fellowship custodial committee are pleased to announce Taylor Mitchell as the 2023 Fellow. Every year the committee faces a tough choice; how do you choose between so many different visions? How do you choose between poetry, or fiction or memoir? In a field of incredibly strong applications, Taylor’s project, a novel exploring the story of an exchange student who finds themself drawn into a community centred on art and climate activism, immediately stood out. We cannot wait for this work to be out in the world.”

We congratulate Taylor 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.

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The Kat Muscat Fellowship is made possible through the generous support of our community. Please follow the link below to make a one-off or regular recurring donation to support the development of empathetic and defiant young writers and editors.

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