We are delighted to announce Dženana Vucic and Gurmeet Kaur as the two winning recipients of the 2023 KYD New Critics Program.
Dženana and Gurmeet will each publish five essay length reviews (approx. 1200 words) on recent-release fiction and non-fiction between March and December 2023.
Each critic will also receive editorial feedback and mentorship throughout the year with writer, editor and critic Cher Tan, as well as appear at two panel/discussion type events in 2023 to discuss the function, form and future of Australian literary criticism.
Gurmeet Kaur is a writer and poet living on Wurundjeri country. Her work appears in Cordite, Peril, Sydney Review of Books, and elsewhere. She received a Varuna Fellowship in 2022 and is a member of the 2021-2022 West Writers Group with Footscray Community Arts Centre. As a KYD New Critic, she hopes to contribute to Australian literary conversations by writing incisive criticism embedded within an ethics of care and develop thinking about our shared literary culture.
Dženana Vucic is a Bosnian-Australian writer, poet and critic. She has received the 2022 Marten Bequest, the 2022 Peter Blazey Fellowship, and the 2021 Kat Muscat Fellowship to work on an autotheoretical book about her experience as a refugee, the Bosnian war, identity, memory and un/belonging. Her writing has appeared in Sydney Review of Books, Cordite, Overland, Meanjin, Kill Your Darlings, Australian Poetry Journal, the Australian Multilingual Writing Project, Rabbit and others. As a KYD New Critic she is keen to review works that encounter and engage with un/belonging, diaspora, myths of nationality and identity under neoliberal capitalism.
We’d also like to make special mention of the following highly commended entrants, in alphabetical order:
- Bridget Caldwell-Bright
- Zowie Douglas-Kinghorn
- Monikka Eliah
- Sam Elkin
- Georgia White
The 2023 New Critics program saw 49 entries from critics around Australia. Thanks to everyone who entered!
The KYD New Critics Program 2023 is supported by the Victorian Government through Creative Victoria.
