Mykaela Saunders awarded the Peter Blazey 2026 Fellowship
The winner of the Peter Blazey Fellowship for 2026 is Mykaela Saunders, who will use the Fellowship to work on her book, Dear Uncle.
Saunders is a Koori/Goori and Lebanese writer and postdoctoral research fellow researching First Nations speculative fiction.
Saunders' writing has won multiple awards including the David Unaipon Award, Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize, the Oodgeroo Noonuccal Indigenous Poetry Prize, and the Rosemary van den Berg Prize for First Nations Criticism.
She edited the world's first anthology of blackfella speculative fiction, This All Come Back Now, which won an Aurealis Award.
The panel were unanimous in recognising the singular quality of Saunders' uncompromising, cut-through authorial voice and vision.
In accepting the Peter Blazey Fellowship, Saunders said: "Bugalbeh (thank you)! Like Peter Blazey, my Uncle Kevin Saunders lived a full and fast life, not an easy one. Uncle Kev was a proud Dharug man who was so, so funny, creative and philosophical, and cared for many humans and other animals throughout his life.
"A working-class Koori, he also lived with some significant struggles. He died too young, of lung cancer, aged 55. It must have taken great courage for my Uncle to put his poetry out there in the world.
"Writing my own letters and poems in response to his demands deep emotional presence; it takes time and heart to sit with my Uncle's work, thinking and feeling about what he is saying through them, and writing back to him with love and integrity in a way that respects the living and the dead.
"It's not writing I can do in short bursts of stolen time.
"Thanks to the Peter Blazey Fellowship I don't have to choose between my work and creative practice, as I've had to so many times – and as my Uncle had to too. Now I have the chance to turn this project into a book that will do my Uncle justice".
Special commendations went to the following outstanding writers:
Joel Stephen Birnie for Us, the Birds and Other Sky-dwellers
Joel Stephen Birnie's manuscript in progress, Us, the Birds and Other Sky-dwellers, is a startlingly original memoir of his experiences of homelessness. An emotional and psychological exploration of a small-town 'queer' experience, Birnie shares the vulnerability of isolation, social and sexual naïveté, pervasive bigotries and familial estrangement. Leading from his acclaimed work as a visual artist and decolonising historian, Birnie's new project aims to share witness from a perspective not often considered or understood.
Jack Latimore for Kumanjayi
Building on his distinguished record as a journalist, Jack Latimore's new book project, Kumanjayi, interrogates how youth justice systems across the country continue to target, harm, and criminalise Aboriginal children. Writing with clarity, care, and ethical precision, Latimore's manuscript focuses not only on exposing failure – but too on thinking through what is working, and why. Combining reportage, reflection, and historical inquiry, Kumanjayi promises to be a thoughtful and important contribution to contemporary non-fiction.
Kate Lilley for Lives of the Poets
Acclaimed poet Kate Lilley is commended for her nuanced reckoning with the trauma of long-term sexual abuse. In spare, authoritative prose, Lilley addresses complicity and culpability within her infamous mother Dorothy Hewett’s creative circle of powerful male artists. Lilley's quest for comfort and safety in her queer identity parallels her growing career as a writer and scholar in this unflinching account. Taking its working title, Lives of the Poets, from the canonical eighteenth century work of the same name by Samuel Johnson, this memoir considers the queer relations of mothers, daughters, sisters and lovers, and the complexities of various kinds of coming out and survival.
See the full list of citations and list of past winners on the Faculty of Arts website.