Dr Amy McQuire awarded the Peter Blazey 2027 Fellowship

The Faculty of Arts is delighted to announce that Dr Amy McQuire has been awarded the 2027 Peter Blazey Fellowship to support work on her forthcoming book, State of Disappearance.

Dr McQuire is a Darumbal and South Sea Islander woman, author, journalist and Senior Lecturer at Queensland University of Technology, where she researches Indigenous media and issues of Indigenous justice.

State of Disappearance is a work of creative non-fiction, journalism and memoir, drawing on McQuire's time spent with families of disappeared Aboriginal women.

Structured around five cases in central Queensland, the book examines patterns of disappearance and the silencing of Aboriginal women, while foregrounding the voices, experiences and testimonies of their families.

In awarding the Fellowship, the selection committee recognised the significance of McQuire's project, praising her distinctive approach to storytelling.

"Members of the Peter Blazey Fellowship panel recognised the timeliness and import of McQuire’s project and praised the originality and rigour of her method, which prioritises relationships with – and accountability towards – the manuscript’s key subjects and their families."

The judges also highlighted the work's potential to contribute to a broader national conversation.

"State of Disappearance has the potential to enable a conversation of national significance, towards accountability and healing."

Reflecting on the project, McQuire described her approach as a process of Black witnessing, challenging conventional true crime narratives by centring the spirit, resistance and continuing presence of Aboriginal women through their families' testimonies.

On receiving the Fellowship, McQuire said: "Thank you to the family of Peter Blazey and the selection committee for this enormous honour."

McQuire reflected on Blazey's legacy as a journalist and his commitment to reporting on homophobic and racist violence.

"His legacy reminds me of the importance of journalism as witnessing, and how our power is in your voices, in narrating our own experiences, in marginalised communities writing for our own people in the fight for justice."

McQuire said the Fellowship would provide valuable time to complete a project she has been developing for more than a decade.

"I applied because I needed time to spend with the stories, and I'm so grateful that the generosity of the fellowship will enable me to do that."

The selection committee also commended Toby Fitch for Bad Things Happen in the Sunset, Louisa Lim for Portrait of a Woman Erased; The Lost Histories and Jonno Revanche for All Flowers in Time Bend Toward the Sun.

The Peter Blazey Fellowship is awarded annually to writers working in the non-fiction fields of biography, autobiography and life writing to further a work in progress.

Full citations and a list of past winners of the Peter Blazey Fellowship can be found on the Faculty of Arts website.