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 On August 8th 2024, I was lucky enough to receive the Greg Crombie Postgraduate Work of the Year Award at Curtin University for my essay "Pardoned to Serve His Majesty by Sea": the life of George Briggs. The essay was earlier published in the Van Diemen Land Anthology 2023, but now it appears as an appendix to my recently-released novel, Diemens. The award honours of the life of school teacher Greg Crombie, who was tragically killed by lightning in 2008.
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 ‘A cracking tale that closely follows the historical context’
—Aunty Patsy Cameron ‘I am George Baggs, wrenched from the cradle of my birthing and flung across the sea to this infernal place at the mercy of a pitiless wind … a place where the western winds howl ceaselessly and rain pours down in sheets from the maw of a black sky.’ DIEMENS is a tale of Tasmania’s origins like no other, a story of how two worlds collide, transforming colonial Van Diemen’s Land. George Baggs, a young Englishman exiled from his homeland, is crewed aboard a Bass Strait sealing ship. Fleeing the cruelty of his masters, Baggs and friend Jimmy Brown are saved by the kindness of northeast Aboriginal Tasmanian clansmen. DIEMENS follows the colony’s first decades told through the lens of a family destined to shape Tasmanian history. Diemens is now available for order from Forty South. More places to buy coming soon!  I am lucky enough to have a non-fiction piece, ‘Helicopter Parents’, in this new release from Night Parrot Press, Ourselves: 100 Micro Memoirs. This is the first ever collection of micro memoirs (750 words or fewer) by WA writers. Night Parrot Press have been doing amazing work over the past few years and really presenting new publishing opportunities for WA writers, so I am really grateful to editors Laura Keenan, Linda Martin and Casey Mulder. I never really wrote a lot of flash fiction in the past but the publishing opportunities offered by Night Parrot encouraged me to start. The book is launching on April 20th but you can order your copy right here on the publisher’s website.
 On April 13th I will be attending the York Writers' Festival and appearing in conversation with WritingWA's Will Yeoman. It looks like a really interesting program across the whole weekend and I am looking forward to meeting all who attend. The winners of the Wheatbelt Short Story Competition will also be announced on the 13th. I'm intrigued by the thought of finding out about York's Dark Corners too!
 My non-fiction piece ‘The Off-Site Program’ will shortly appear in this anthology from Affirm Press – see blurb below.
An anthology about the power of teachers and their capacity to shape lives, edited by award-winning teacher-librarian Megan Daley of Children’s Book Daily and the Your Kid’s Next Read podcast. Featuring contributions from Jessie Tu, Tony Birch, Rick Morton, Jacqueline Harvey + many more. The power of an exceptional teacher cannot be overestimated. Sometimes it is not about what they taught you, but about how they made you feel as a person. Teacher, Teacher is an anthology of stories showcasing those brilliant educators who have nurtured, inspired, championed or created change – in one student or in a community. You can preorder the Teacher, Teacher anthology here.  As part of my PhD studies, I have been researching the lives of early Vandemonian sealers with a particular emphasis on George Briggs, an important but mostly elusive figure in this history. I'm pleased to report that my piece "Pardoned to serve His Majesty by sea: The Life of George Briggs" has been chosen as a finalist in the Van Diemen History Prize and thus will be published in the resultant anthology, to be launched at the Hobart Writers Festival in 2023. I'm looking forward to attending the festival and hopefully meeting some of the prizewinners and finalists. Congratulations to Phillipa Moore and Terry Mulhern for taking out this year's prize!
You can read more about the prizewinners and finalists on the Forty South website.  This is the second volume of Humans of the Wheatbelt, featuring some amazing and amazingly inspirational interviews with people from all over the Wheatbelt. I had the honour and pleasure of writing up these interviews and co-editing the book, so any typos are on me!
Head over to the Humans of the Wheatbelt site to find out more. I have a piece of Tassie nonfiction, ‘The Empire Never Ended’, in the latest issue of The Saltbush Review. This is a new mag out from the University of Adelaide. Lots of really interesting work here, all free to read!   'New Year Island', which is the first chapter of my work-in-progress Diemens, recently received a Highly Commended certificate in the Stringybark Short Story Award 2022. The winning and highly commended stories appear in Fruitcake Frenzy from Stringybark Publishing.
Meanwhile 'The Empire Never Ended', my latest nonfiction piece related to Tasmania, has been accepted to appear in an upcoming issue of The Saltbush Review.  My non-fiction piece 'In lutriwita' recently appeared in Issue 16 of Traces, which is available in newsagencies. It is also available to read free online over here at Backstory Journal. This is my first piece of Tasmanian writing to see publication and there will be more like it over the next few years as I work on my PhD in Tasmanian Fiction at Curtin University.
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