Background
The Kat Muscat Custodial Committee was established in 2015 to further the legacy of Kat Muscat through projects which support and develop the work of young writers and editors. The Kat Muscat Fellowship is the primary means by which the Committee undertakes this task. The Committee is auspiced by Express Media.
About the Fellows
Munira Tabassum Ahmed | 2022 Fellow
Munira Tabassum Ahmed is a 16-year-old writer. Her work is published in Best of Australian Poems 2021, Meanjin, Australian Poetry Journal, SOFTBLOW, Emerging Writers’ Festival, Runway Journal, The Lifted Brow, Cordite, and elsewhere. She was a 2020-21 youth curator and moderator for the Sydney Writers’ Festival, and co-host of a 2021 Culture Makers Lab workshop with the Immigration Museum, Melbourne. Currently, she edits Hyades Magazine.
Dženana Vucic | 2021 Fellow
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.
Maddie Godfrey | 2020 Fellow
Maddie Godfrey is a Perth-bred writer, poet, editor, educator and emotional feminist, who uses storytelling to facilitate compassionate conversations about social issues. Maddie Godfrey plans to use the fellowship to develop a hybrid manuscript of poetry and personal essays called ‘Womanhood Is A Hungry Mirror’. They will use autobiographical experience to explore the complex visibility of female strippers working in their home town of Perth, Western Australia.
Liana Skrzypczak | 2019 Fellow
“Thank you to Express Media’s board, staff, the Muscat family, and appointed community members for entrusting this fellowship to me and my ambitious, square peg of a novel, The Lore of Jeju.
I hope to be an advocate for Kat’s legacy – a legacy that reminds us how bold prose, brave ideas and fearless delivery can challenge accepted norms and bend the world better one word at a time.”
Ana Maria Gomides | 2018 Fellow
“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.
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.”
Read Ana Maria Gomides’ work online
Fury | 2017 Fellow
“It is a hushed fact that people who have received a grant or fellowship are more likely to receive another one. Something about one funding body putting faith in you lends credibility and assurance to other funding bodies. It is because of this that I believe my being awarded the Kat Muscat Fellowship greatly assisted in securing funding from the City of Melbourne for a separate project; a graphic novel. The Kat Muscat Fellowship is – and will be, going forward – an integral part of my being able to work, write and create professionally. This opportunity is not a singular opportunity in terms of my career, it is something that will continue to generate opportunity for me.”
Check out Fury’s writing online
Bri Lee |2016 inaugural Fellow
“The Kat Muscat Fellowship changed my entire career trajectory. It put me on the map and helped me secure a literary agent which led to my signing with Allen & Unwin. More importantly though, it allowed me to pay two incredible mentors who helped me through the process of drafting my manuscript and who have continued to help me navigate the complexities of the writing life. I have no doubt that I would not be the writer I am today – either on paper or just for myself – without the fellowship. For anyone thinking of applying, please know that I almost didn’t, because of imposter syndrome. I didn’t know what the committee wanted, but felt sure it “wasn’t me”. If that sounds familiar, then know that it’s self-sabotage. Sit your butt in a chair and nail your application. It’s never a waste of time. You never know what might come of it.”
Check out Bri Lee’s debut memoir Eggshell Skull (2018, Allen & Unwin)