The Cove Park / Varuna – The National Writers’ House of Australia Residency Exchange Programme was launched in 2019 to create new international opportunities for writers connected to both organisations. To date, and with support from The Bridge Awards, we have created three one-month residencies in Australia awarded to the writers and former Cove Park residents Jan Carson, Victoria Mackenzie, and Nicola White, and three one-month residencies in Scotland for former Varuna residents Roanna Gonsalves, Leah Kaminsky, and Jeanine Leane.

The 2024 Cove Park residency for a writer and former Varuna resident has been awarded to Brooke Robinson.

Brooke is a playwright and novelist from Western Sydney. Her professionally produced plays include Bad Machine (Campbelltown Arts Centre, 2022) and Good Cook. Friendly. Clean (Griffin Theatre, 2018), both published by Currency Press. Her debut novel, The Interpreter, was published in 2023 with Harvill Secker/Penguin Random House in Australia, the UK and Commonwealth, and HarperCollins in the USA. It is translated into German, Italian, Czech and Russian and is in development as a TV series in Hollywood. Penguin Random House publish her second novel, The Negotiator, in June 2024. In 2020 Brooke won Australia’s Lysicrates prize for drama. In 2022 she was writer in residence at City of Melbourne libraries, and in 2023 was a Yaddo fellow in NY, USA.

Image: Brooke Robinson (photography, Agatha Snow)