The National Library is pleased to announce the recipients of the 2023 Creative Arts Fellowships.  

The Creative Arts Fellowships support writers and artists to spend four weeks at the Library researching and developing a new artistic concept, artwork or body of work inspired or informed by the collections.  

Recipients

2023 Creative Arts Fellowship for Australian Writing, supported by the Ray Mathew and Eva Kollsman Trust 

Dr Christina Thompson

Palapala: A Story of Reading, Writing and Books – a work of creative nonfiction that tells the story of how and why the technology of writing was introduced to the Pacific in the early decades of the 19th century.

2023 Creative Arts Fellowship, supported by the Friends of the National Library of Australia 

Mr Sam Wallman

Green and Pink Bans – Drawing upon the unique collections of the NLA, comics-journalist and cartoonist Sam Wallman will continue his research into the Green Bans (strike action conducted for environmentalist or conservationist purposes), and also attempt to uncover more information about the Pink Bans (strike action conducted in support of the LGBTQIA+ community), of which less is known.

Thank you  

The Library would like to acknowledge the donors who support the Creative Arts Fellowships program, including the Ray Mathew and Eva Kollsman Trust and the Friends of the National Library of Australia. We also thank all applicants for the 2023 program, noting a strong field of applications.  

About  

The Creative Arts Fellowships offer $10,000 to support practising writers and artists to develop new work creatively using or inspired by the Library’s collections. The Fellowships offer artists a unique opportunity to immerse themselves in the collections, including music, maps, rare books or ephemera, or original sources, such as pictures, manuscripts, oral histories and folklore recordings.  

At the end of their residency, Fellows will present their findings in free public lectures.