Explore our writing and literature showcase

We’re home to some of Australia’s most original voices

You Will Not Know in Advance What You’ll Feel

You Will Not Know in Advance What You’ll Feel is a poetry collection written by Deakin senior lecturer Antonia Pont. It was published as part of Rabbit Poetry’s Rabbit Poet Series and explores concepts of time, thresholds, memory and ‘the edge of things’.

Thinking Feeling

Antonia is also internationally known for her Thinking Feeling series of essays, which have been published in The Lifted Brow, LitHub, and Antithesis. This particular article had 20,000 readers within the first five days of its publication.

Adult Fantasy

Adult Fantasy, by Deakin faculty member Briohny Doyle, is part-memoir and part-exploration of what adult milestones mean in this age of economic uncertainty. It has received praise from publications like The Age and The Guardian.

The Island Will Sink

The Island Will Sink is Briohny Doyle’s debut novel, published by Text Publishing. It explores pressing questions around digitisation and reality, and borrows language and techniques from film in a unique narratological approach.

Echolalia

Echolalia is Briohny Doyle’s third novel, which has been described alternately as ‘a horror novel’, ‘a dark, deft and gripping read about mania and motherhood’ and ‘a story about the climate crisis.’

Prose Poetry: An Introduction

Deakin professor Cassandra Atherton’s contributions to the theory and practice of prose poetry are internationally recognised. She and co-author Paul Hetherington wrote Prose Poetry: An Introduction, which was published by Princeton University Press.

Strange Cargo

Cassandra’s creative work has also been anthologised in a range of publications, including in Strange Cargo: Five Australian Poets (ed. by Paul Munden, Smith/Doorstep Books).

Exploded View

Carrie Tiffany is a Deakin PhD by Prior Publication. Her third novel, Exploded View, is described as a ‘spare, powerful, and intensely visual’ work. It has won a range of prestigious literary awards and was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin 2019.

Starstruck

Deakin professor David Mccooey is a prize-winning poet, critic and editor. His lyric poetry collection Star Struck was published in 2016 to critical acclaim, and contains poems ranging from ‘the confessional’ to ‘the comic, satirical and … disturbing.’

The Apartment

In addition, David Mccooey is a sound artist and composer, producing poetry that bring together spoken word, original music and sound design. The Apartment is an example of this new form of work and may be heard on Basecamp, at: https://davidmccooey.bandcamp.com/album/the-apartment

Meanjin (Summer 2019)

Dani Netherclift is a PhD student in writing and literature at Deakin. Her work has been published in Meanjin (pictured), Cordite, e.merge magazine, with the Adelaide Festival, and is forthcoming from Rabbit 33.

A Sand Archive

Gregory Day studied a PhD in writing and literature at Deakin, where he also tutored in experimental writing and short stories. His novel, A Sand Archive, was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin in 2019.

Valentine

Deakin lecturer Jodi McAlister studies romantic love and genre fiction – so, as she puts it, it’s not surprising that she writes genre fiction about romantic love. Valentine is the first novel in her YA trilogy, which features an inclusive cast of Australian characters.

Trigger Warning

Trigger Warning is the latest poetry collection by Deakin associate professor Maria Takolander. She has also published The Double: (and Other Stories), a collection of short fiction, and Ghostly Subjects.

One True Thing

Nicole Hayes is a Deakin PhD student studying young adult fiction and the author of three critically acclaimed YA novels (One True Thing, The Whole of My World, A Shadow’s Breath).

MEET SOME OF OUR STAFF AND ALUMNI

Hear from our staff and students on what forms of literature they specialise in – and what they strive to achieve at Deakin.

 

Antonia Pont (PhD, MA) joined Deakin in 2011 in the Writing and Literatures areas. Her research involves writing essays, poetry and critical and philosophical works that ask questions about time, creativity, poetics, methodologies of transformation, habit and intentionality, learning and stability, as well as movement and stillness practices. She is internationally known for her ‘Thinking Feeling’ series of essays (published in The Lifted Brow, Literary Hub, Antithesis), and her work and publications on practising theory. In 2019, she published the full-length collection You Will Not Know in Advance What You’ll Feel, which was nominated for a national poetry award, and from 2017-2019 she was Chair of the Australasian peak body for writing (AAWP). She is the current stream leader of ‘Word and Performance’ for the Deakin Motion Lab.

She says, ‘I love to teach students who are embarking on their experience with Deakin, reassuring them that they are at a university that treats students as people, and where the teaching staff are genuinely interested in each person’s future. This means helping each learner to find their career groove and expertise, as well as to cultivate a suite of tools for living generous, ethical and fulfilling lives. Working with someone on a dedicated and long-term project is a great privilege which I take very seriously. I’ve worked on projects about mourning, environmental loss, historical drama, the female gothic, feminist theatre-making, Indigenous semiotics, fantasy literatures, creative nonfiction, public art and many other areas.

I attempt to work without drama and strain, instilling instead a capacity for steady, consistent work, rigorous curiosity, along with a respect for the varied creative and intellectual rhythms that drive original research.’

Briohny Doyle is the author of three books including the novels Echolalia (2021 Vintage), and The Island Will Sink (2016 Brow Books) and a memoir Adult Fantasy, which was shortlisted for the 2018 Melbourne Prize for Literature. Her essays and short fiction have appeared in The Monthly, Griffith Review, Meanjin and The Guardian. She’s performed work at the MCA and The Sydney Festival and is a Fulbright Scholar. She is a lecturer in Writing, Literature and Culture at Deakin.

Briohny says, ‘I work across fiction and creative nonfiction. I’m interested in producing texts that trouble genre. Broadly, much of my work is concerned with how literature can help us to see the interconnected and ongoing nature of social and environmental crisis. In the classroom, I try to help students think of their writing as an intervention in or response to what’s going on in the world around them.’

Cassandra Atherton is an award-winning scholar of prose poetry and widely anthologised prose poet. She was a Harvard Visiting Scholar in English and a Visiting Fellow at Sophia University, Tokyo. She has published 30 critical and creative books and is the recipient of many national and international grants. Her prose poetry has been translated into Japanese, Korean and Chinese. She co-authored Prose Poetry: An Introduction (Princeton UP, 2020) and the Anthology of Australian Prose Poetry (Melbourne UP, 2020). Cassandra is a commissioning editor for Westerly magazine, series editor at Spineless Wonders, associate editor at MadHat Press (USA) and Professor of Writing and Literature at Deakin University.

Cassandra says, ‘As a Professor of Writing and Literature at Deakin, I focus on scholarship and creative practice connected to prose poetry and microliterature, aiming to open up discussion around such issues as women’s writing, hybridity and interart connections. I teach ways of understanding contemporary literary works in historical, social and literary contexts. I love working with my students to hone their writing craft and prepare their work for publication. Deakin University provides an intellectual home that allows this research, writing and teaching to flourish, and ways of reaching a supportive and stimulating community of like-minded academics and motivated students.’

Dani Netherclift lives in Mansfield with her husband and two children, where she is currently completing the first year of her PhD at Deakin University via the cloud. Her work (poetry, nonfiction and book reviews) has been published in Verandah Journal, Meanjin Quarterly, Cordite, Mascara Literary Review, e.merge Magazine (via the Emerging Writers’ Festival), as well as in Swamp Journal, Meniscus, Stilts; further work is forthcoming in Rabbit 33. An excerpt of her poem ‘Colours’ was printed on a sidewalk in Adelaide as part of the 2020 Adelaide Festival. In 2020, Dani won first prize in Queenscliffe Literary Festival’s Microfiction competition as well as the Australasian Association of Writing Programmes/ The Slow Canoe Creative Nonfiction Prize for her piece ‘An Incomplete Archive of Blue’.

Dani says, ‘Studying at Deakin has given me the confidence to submit my work to prestigious journals and competitions and to shush the voice of imposter syndrome. As I continue my PhD I hope to complete and have published a long form lyric essay but I also have two poetry manuscripts and a fiction manuscript up my sleeve. The most important thing that my studies in creative writing at Deakin has taught me is how crucial it is to practice your craft every day. Just keep writing (and reading).’

David Mccooey is a professor of Writing & Literature, based at the Waurn Ponds campus of Deakin University. He is a prize-winning poet, critic, and editor. His first collection of poems, Blister Pack, won the Mary Gilmore Award and was shortlisted for three other awards. My latest collection is Star Struck. He has released three albums of ‘poetry soundtracks’, the latest being The Apartment, in collaboration with the poet Paul Hetherington. In addition, he is the Deputy General Editor of the Macquarie PEN Anthology of Australian Literature.

David says, ‘As well as writing poetry and criticism, I am a sound artist and composer, producing ‘poetry soundtracks’ that bring together spoken-word poetry, original music, and sound design. These works offer new directions in spoken-word electronica, and evoke electronic, ambient, and contemporary-classical idioms. As a professor of Writing and Literature, I especially love teaching students about the various ways they can develop their own creative practice, especially as something that brings about the new through a deep conversation with the work of others.

Jodi McAlister is the author of the Valentine series and a Lecturer in Writing, Literature and Culture at Deakin University. Her reality TV rom-coms Here For The Right Reasons and Can I Steal You For A Second? will be published in 2022.

Jodi says, ‘I study romantic love and genre fiction, and so it’s not surprising that I write genre fiction about romantic love. I think there’s a lot that all writers can learn from genre fiction of all kinds, and so I try to instil these strong storytelling principles in them.’

Nicole Hayes is an award winning author and podcaster from Melbourne. She writes fiction and non-fiction for young people and adults, and is a founding member of the groundbreaking all-female AFL podcast and radio show, The Outer Sanctum. Nicole’s novels include contemporary YA thriller, A Shadow’s Breath (Penguin Random House, 2017), which was shortlisted for the NSW Premier’s Award; One True Thing (Penguin Random House, 2015), winner of the Children’s Peace Literature Award and shortlisted for the WA Premier’s Literary Award; and The Whole of My World (2013), longlisted for the Gold Inky Award. Most recently, she has co-written the only AFL junior fiction series with Adrian Beck, Little Legends (Hardie Grant Children), published 2020-2021. Little Legends has also been selected for an Australia Reads edition for National Reading Hour, 2021. She is currently pursuing a PhD in Young Adult fiction at Deakin University, where she also teaches in their degree program.

Nicole says, ‘As someone who enjoys writing for all age groups and across different genres, my research at Deakin has allowed me to deepen my understanding of the craft, and continue to publish stories that matter to me most.’