At the 2025 Emerging Writers’ Festival, EWF X Textile: An Exhibition saw an array of artists come together to fuse textile tradition with verbal and written storytelling. Relive this exhibition by clicking on the pieces below, and scroll to find out more about the writers!
Be sure to check back every week for new work!
Anne M Carson
Anne M Carson is an Australian independent researcher, creative writing teacher, poet, and essayist living by the bay on unceded Bunurong Country. Her poetry has been published internationally, and widely in Australia over many years, receiving numerous awards including being shortlisted in the Women Authors New South Wales Poetry Prize (2024) and commended in the Ada Cambridge Poetry award (2024). Her latest book is The Detective’s Chair: prose poems about fictional detectives (Liquid Amber Press 2023). Her PhD (2023, RMIT) received an Outstanding Dissertation Prize (American Educational Research Association, Visual and Performing Arts SIG, 2024).
Emilie Collyer
Emilie Collyer lives on unceded Wurundjeri land where she writes across forms. Her poetry collection Do you have anything less domestic? (Vagabond Press 2022) won the Five Islands Poetry Prize and in 2024 she was runner-up in the Gwen Harwood Poetry Prize and shortlisted in the Newcastle Poetry Prize. Emilie is currently under commission with The Street Theatre (Canberra) and Red Stitch (Melbourne) where her play Super will premiere in 2025. She recently completed a PhD researching feminist creative practice at RMIT where she is now an Adjunct Industry Fellow.
Julia English
Julia English is a researcher and creative practitioner, whose work spans written, audio, digital, and textile media. She has a PhD in fashion and textiles from RMIT University, where her research explored how local actors collaborate to remake textile waste, sharing her interviews via her podcast Seam Change, and publishing her findings within her thesis ‘Collaborations for Remake: Participation in Practice’. She currently teaches at RMIT and is exploring different forms of outcomes as part of her emerging creative practice.
Leila Lois
Leila Lois is a dancer and writer of Kurdish/Celtic origin, raised in Aotearoa. She has poetry, short stories and essays published both in Australia and internationally. In her spare time, she loves to go vintage shopping and make costumes for dance.
Trish Bolton
Trish Bolton’s debut novel, Whenever You’re Ready, was published by Allen & Unwin in 2024. Her writing has appeared in The Saturday Paper, The Age, Sunday Age, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Canberra Times, Overland, New Matilda, The Big Issue and Visible Ink. Trish has been the recipient of an Australian Society of Authors mentorship, a Varuna Publishing Introduction Pathway Fellowship, a Varuna Residential Writer’s Fellowship, joint-winner of the Fellowship of Australian Writers (FAW) Jim Hamilton Award, runner-up in the FAW Whitelight Drama Script Award, and longlisted for the Virginia Prize for Fiction (UK) and Mslexia Women’s Novel Competition (UK).
Shu-Ling Chua
Shu-Ling Chua is a Melbourne-based essayist, poet and zine-maker. Her essay collection, Echoes, jointly won the Small Press Network Book of the Year Award. Shu-Ling’s work has appeared in Peril Magazine, Meanjin, Rabbit, 4A Papers and elsewhere. She is interested in unexpected beauty, small joys and quiet epiphanies.
Mira Robertson
Mira Robertson is a novelist, short story writer and screenwriter. She is the author of two novels: Grace & Marigold (Spinifex Press, 2024) and The Unexpected Education of Emily Dean (Black Inc, 2018). Her short stories have won prizes and been shortlisted for awards. She is published in various literary magazines including Meanjin, The Furphy Anthology 2020 and Griffith Review. She has won prizes for her film scripts, receiving a Best Original Screenplay Australian Film Institute award for ONLY THE BRAVE (1994), and an Australian Writers Guild Best Adapted Screenplay award for HEAD ON (1998).
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