Each year KSPF is proud to promote the craft of writing by hosting a number of writers in our residency program which is funded by the Department of Culture and the Arts. The residency program includes positions for established and emerging writers as well as our young writers residency. As well as allowing each writer the time and space to work on their own writing projects the writers participate in the events of the centre and run workshops thus sharing their knowledge and experience throughout our writing community.
The Writer in Residence Accommodation and three other Writers' Retreats is also available for rent by writers wishing to get away from the distractions of normal life to progress a piece of work, when it is not being used by KSP Writers in Residence. Accommodation
Natalie is a local writer who is currently working on a novel, set in Australia and Italy in the early 1950s, and follows a young family as they leave their village to forge a new life in Fremantle. It explores the theme of migration, as well as the relationship between the characters migrating to Fremantle, and those who have been left behind. The over-arching theme is the ways in which people are able to review, suppress or fictionalise their pasts. Natalie’s writing has been published in literary and scholarly journals, and her short fiction has been broadcast on radio. She has also taught Creative Writing at Curtin University, and has recently completed her PhD.
Jean is an established poet with a long record of publication, awards, grants and fellowships. Her poems and stories have been appearing in literary magazines and anthologies in Australia and overseas since 1970, and she has published three collections of her poetry. She has promoted poetry and encouraged other writers with writers’ centres, educational centres and community groups, and has been a competition judge, a mentor, an editor, a reader, and a workshop facilitator and creative writing teacher in schools, universities and local communities. Jean is particularly interested in celebrating the Australian landscape. Her project at KSP is a collection of poems exploring where a variety of contemporary Australians feel ‘at home’ - homes of memory, dream and fantasy, as well as physical places.
Heather K Hummel has worked as a college English teacher, an editor, and a technical writer. She is one of the founding editors of the online literary journal, Blood Orange Review and currently works at the National Writing Project headquarters in Berkeley, California, USA. She has published recent poems in Babel Fruit, Calyx, and Quay, and has also written a young adult novel titled Urban Coyote, still unpublished. Heather's current writing project is a collection of poetry titled Not Touching, Touching. The poems explore intimate human relationships to nature, especially the interconnected fragility that comes with environmental destruction and pollution. Her work is informed by her interest in nature writing, deep ecology, and ecofeminist theory.
For the past decade Helen has been seriously developing her poetry and fiction whilst studying professional writing, history and education in tertiary institutions. In this time she has had short stories and poetry published in Westerly, Veranda, Voiceworks, Hecate and Poetrix, as well as academic essays published in Antipodes and Idiom. She has been short-listed for the Marian Eldridge Award (2006) and won second prize in the John Marsden Award for Young Australian Writers (2005). Helen is currently studying Australian women writers from the 1930s (including Prichard) in the form of PhD research at Melbourne University, where she also tutors creative writing. Her project while at KSP is a work of fiction, Paper People, and Helen hopes that the residency will provide the concentrated time necessary to develop it to its full potential.
Jessica is a local writer with one completed novel in her portfolio, Sweetheart - a dramatic novel set in suburban Australia which deals with the fallout of a family’s devastating secret. She studied English and Media Studies at Murdoch University with lecturers including Simone Lazaroo and Deborah Robertson. She is currently working on a trilogy of supernatural novels set in New York and Mexico and plans to use her time at the centre to further develop this piece of work.
The series begins with Mia Blake, who is walking home from work one bleak winter evening when everything goes black. She wakes up three days later in a seedy Mexican motel, bitten, bloodied and…dead. A newborn vampire, Mia must leave everything she holds dear and use her wits to survive in a tough city.
Jessica also publishes a weekly writing blog as well as a personal development blog and is interested in building a long-term writing career.