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Centre Staff

Kate wears a square necked black top, with a colourful necklace. Her long hair is swept back over her shoulders. She smiles at the camera.  

A/Prof. Kate Fagan

Director

Kate Fagan is the Director of the Writing and Society Research Centre. She is an internationally recognised poet, scholar and songwriter whose third collection of poetry First Light (Giramondo) was short-listed for both the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards and The Age Book of the Year Award. Her new collection Song in the Grass will be published by Giramondo in 2024. Her album Diamond Wheel won the National Film and Sound Archive Award for Folk Recording, and she is a former Editor-in-Chief of How2, the established U.S.-based journal of contemporary and modernist innovative poetry and poetics. Kate is the Project Director of The Writing Zone, a mentoring program for emerging writers and artsworkers from Western Sydney.

 
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A/Prof. Anne Jamison

Deputy Director

Anne Jamison is a feminist literary critic with a research focus on nineteenth-century Irish women's writing. She is currently Associate Professor in English in the School of Humanities and Communication Arts, as well as Deputy Director of the Writing and Society Research Centre. She has published broadly on nineteenth-century Irish writing, including research on Alicia Lefanu, Kate O'Brien, Frances Browne, James Clarence Mangan and Hannah Boyd, as well as on the intersections between law, literature and authorship in the early Victorian period. She published a monograph in 2016 with Cork University Press on collaborative Irish writers Edith Somerville and Violet Martin: E. OE. Somerville and Martin Ross; Female Authorship and Literary Collaboration. Anne is currently working on a book-length project on Irish women's fantasy and fairy tale writing in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and has recently been awarded a Keough-Naughton Library Award in Irish Studies at the University of Notre Dame (USA) to support this work.

 
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Suzanne Gapps

Executive Officer

Suzanne is Executive Officer with Writing and Society. Please contact Suzanne, s.gapps@westernsydney.edu.au for any enquiries about the Centre.

 
James Jiang is wearing a grey shirt and black glasses. He has beard and stubble, and is of East Asian descent. He is staring directly into the camera. 

Dr James Jiang

Editor, Sydney Review of Books

James Jiang is an editor, writer, and academic who lives on Bidjigal country and works on the lands of the Dharug people. Prior to joining the Sydney Review of Books, he was Assistant Editor at Griffith Review and Australian Book Review. He received his PhD in modernist literature from the University of Cambridge and taught in the English and Theatre Studies program at the University of Melbourne for a number of years. His essays and reviews have appeared in a variety of scholarly and generalist publications in Australia and abroad.

 
Melinda has long brown hair, tied into two plaits that lay down over her shoulders. She wears brown round glasses and an orange headband. She is smiling at the camera.  

Dr Melinda Jewell

Research Project Officer / Coordinator, Sydney Review of Books

Melinda oversees the Centre’s and School of Humanities and Communication Arts' postgraduate training program, is the coordinator of the Sydney Review of Books, and project advisor on The Writing Zone. She holds a doctorate in Australian literature and since completing that in 2009 has worked as a research assistant on a number of research projects.

 
Helen Tran wears a white singlet and has short black hair. She looks at the camera,.  

Huyen Hac Helen Tran

Digital Communications Officer, Sydney Review of Books

Huyen Hac Helen Tran is a  writer and digital specialist working on Wangal land. Her work can be found in Sydney Review of Books, Liminal Magazine,The Suburban Review, The Big Issue, Peril Mag and more.