NWC – First Press: Debut Authors

Munira Tabassum Ahmed’s work has been published in Pleiades, The Adroit Journal, Meanjin, Best of Australian Poems, Liminal, Cordite, and elsewhere. She was the 2022 Kat Muscat Fellow. ‘The Clinging Thing’ (Penguin, 2026) is her first novel.

Patrick Hunn is a writer from New Zealand who lives in Melbourne. His collection of short stories, Either Way You Lose, is published by Sick Leave Press.

Kerry Jewell is a writer and nuclear medicine physician. She is from Wodonga in North East Victoria. Kerry is an accomplished public speaker and regularly presents at local and international conferences, along with fulfilling session chair and emcee duties. Outside of medicine, her short fiction has appeared in local and international literary journals and anthologies, including Island, The Saturday Paper, May Magazine (NZ) and the Bath Short Story Award Anthology (UK). In 2020 she was shortlisted for the Richell Prize for emerging writers. Her debut novel A Little Unwell was published with Hachette in April 2026.

Valerie Ng is a writer and critic. Her first novel, Driver Driver, was published on 9 June.

Her short stories have been published in Meanjin and Island Magazine, and her arts criticism has found homes in the Australian Book Review, ABC, Time Out, The Guardian, and The Big Issue. Elsewhere, she is a lawyer.