Announcing the 2025 Kat Muscat Fellowship Shortlist
Express Media and the Kat Muscat Fellowship Committee are thrilled to announce the shortlist for this year’s Kat Muscat Fellowship, which offers support and development to a young Australian writer or editor.
The 2025 Kat Muscat Fellowship shortlist is:
Liana Black
Adalya Nash Hussein
Cat Williams
Liana Black
Liana Black is a 28-year-old freelance editor and emerging writer of Women and LGBTQIA+ focused bildungsroman fiction. In 2025, Liana will be undertaking a year of professional development, research, and consultation to develop her second manuscript, including attending the Faber Academy - Writing a Novel program and an international writing retreat. She has had short works published online including her short story, The Twelfth Day, which was shortlisted and published by the Australian Writer's Centre.
Outside of fiction, Liana is a Communications Executive in the sporting industry and she is a staunch advocate for women and LGBTQIA+ people, particularly in Australian sport. Her work in this area seeks to challenge deeply-embedded cultures and forms the subject for her manuscript in development.
Website: lianablack.com
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.
Cat Williams
Cat is a freelance science writer based in Naarm/Melbourne. Her work looks at the intersections between nature and culture, with a focus on some distinct similarities between human society and the animal kingdom. Cat wants to take down the patriarchy, but will happily start with someone’s racist uncle. Her work has been featured in the Griffith Review, The Saturday Paper, Cosmos Magazine and ParticleWA.
The 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 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.
“We were delighted and overwhelmed by the quality of applications in this significant tenth year of the Fellowship, each one engaging with Kat’s legacy of challenging and ambitious literary projects,” said Jessica Alice, representing the Fellowship Custodial Committee.
The 10th iteration of the Kat Muscat Fellowship marks a decade without the much loved and deeply influential young writer and editor, and a decade of brilliant literary projects realised through the Fellowship.
This is also the final year the Fellowship will be awarded in this structure, before it evolves into its next chapter. The 2025 Fellowship will be a timely opportunity for an emerging writer or editor to make their mark.
This year’s Fellow will be announced on 11 March 2025.
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.