Dr. Josephine Wilson
PhD. English and Cultural Studies, University of Western Australia; M. Phil. Creative Arts, University of Queensland.a.

Greetings.  I lecture in English and Creative Arts at Murdoch University, Australia.    I am an award-winning novelist, essayist, dramatist and poet who has achieved international recognition for my work across a range of genres. My most recent novel Extinctions (UWAP) won the Miles Franklin Literary Award (2017), the Colin Roderick Award (2017) and was short-listed for the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards. It is published by Serpent’s Tail (UK), and Tin House (USA). I am the recipient of recent grants from the Australia Council and Department of Culture and the Arts (WA).I have sat as a peer on both the Australia Council and the Department of Culture, WA assessment panels.

I was a writer-in-residence at Yaddo in Saratoga Springs (2019), and an Asialink resident in Shanghai (2018).

My research research interests include the contemporary feminist novel, the politics of adoption, and theories of suburbia and identity, creative practice methodologies, Chinese literature in English.  I have expertise teaching across a range of disciplines at undergraduate and postgraduate level including in Creative Writing, English Literature and Literary theory, Research Methods, Performance and Theatre, and visual art and design.

I write and think about contemporary arts across forms, and am regularly invited to write catalogue essays to accompany significant exhibitions and performance works.

My work has met with considerable critical acclaim and has been widely reviewed.

I am the mother of two children, who are on their way to being grown-ups.

Josephine.

EGL 230 Writing for Performance (2019, 2020)

EGL247 Literature, Imagination and Politics (2019, 2020)

EGL220 Extended Projects in Creative Writing (2020)

Narrative fiction.

Narrative non-fiction.

History and representation of adoption in narrative.

Art history and design.

Environmental Humanities.

Novel:  Middleborough.

​Extinctions, UWAP (2016)

Awards and Prizes:

Miles Franklin Literary Award, 2017, Perpetual Mutual and The Copyright Agencies Cultural Fund. $60,000.

Colin Roderick Award, Foundation for Australian Literary Studies, James Cook University, $20,000.

H.T. Priestley Memorial Medal, James Cook University.

2015 Dorothy Hewitt Award in manuscript. $10,000.

Shortlisted for 2017 Prime Minister’s Award for Fiction. $5,000.

Poetry:

‘Orans’​​  Runner-up Australian Catholic University) Poetry Prize for Poetry. ​$5,000, 2016.

RECENT GRANTS AND RESIDENCIES

2019 ​          

ABLSS Murdoch:  Small Grant: Ecotone $5000

Residency: Yaddo Writer’s Centre, Saratoga Spring, New York State, funded by WA Department of Local Government, Sport and Cultural Industries:  $13,650

2018

Writer-in-Residence, Shanghai Writer’s Centre, funded by Asialink and DCA WA. $12,000.

Neilma Sidney Travel Award for research into a work of non-fiction exploring notions of family and transcultural adoption. $10,000.

2017

Australia Council for the Arts: Arts Project Funding ‘Middleborough: A State of Mind’, $36,000.​

Wilson, Josephine. “Shipwreck, Without Label.” Performance Research 24, no. 8 (2019): 69-79.

Wilson, Josephine “Once Upon A Time , in Motherland.” In Dangerous ideas about mothers, pp. 99-116. UWA Publishing, 2018.

Wilson, Josephine. Extinctions. Serpent’s Tail, 2018.

Wilson, Josephine. Cusp, UWAP, 2005

Wilson, Josephine, and E. Hefferon. “The geography of haunted places.” Performing the unNameable 131 (1999).

Interviews: Online

https://www.australiandesignreview.com/magazines/mezzanine-mag/context-design-erased-becomes-style/