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Partnership — Cove Park & Varuna Residency Exchange Programme

Launched in 2019 with support from The Bridge Awards, this programme is a partnership between Cove Park and Varuna, the National Writers’ House of Australia. Offering residencies in Scotland and Australia for writers connected to both organisations, the programme has been adapted to take place over two years, with recipients travelling in alternating years. In 2024 we launched a new partnership with Wigtown Book Festival, connecting the participating writers to this acclaimed Scottish book festival.

Varuna, the National Writers’ House of Australia

Residencies


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Brooke Robinson

Brooke Robinson 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 […]

Cove Park / Varuna Residency Exchange Programme

Jeanine Leane

Jeanine Leane is a Wiradjuri writer, poet and academic from southwest New South Wales. Her poetry, short stories, critique, and essays have been published in Hecate: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Women’s Liberation Australian Poetry Journal, Antipodes, Overland and the Sydney Review of Books. Jeanine has published widely in the area of Aboriginal literature, writing otherness […]

Cove Park / Varuna the National Writers’ House Residency Exchange

Leah Kaminsky

Leah Kaminsky is a physician and award-winning writer. Her debut novel The Waiting Room won the Voss Literary Prize. The Hollow Bones won the International Book Awards in both Literary Fiction & Historical Fiction categories and the Best Book Awards for Literary Fiction. She is the author of ten books and her third novel, Doll’s Eye, will be released […]

Cove Park / Varuna Residency Exchange

Roanna Gonsalves

In the inaugural year of our exchange programme with Varuna, the National Writers House of Australia, we are pleased to welcome Roanna Gonsalves to Cove Park. Roanna is the author of The Permanent Resident (University of Western Australia Publishing) which won the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards Multicultural Prize 2018, and was longlisted for the Dobbie […]

Cove Park / Varuna Residency Exchange

Victoria MacKenzie

In Autumn 2019, Scottish novelist, short story writer and Cove Park former resident Victoria MacKenzie will spend four weeks at Varuna in Australia as part of the Cove Park / Varuna Residency Exchange Programme. Victoria MacKenzie lives in the East Neuk of Fife and teaches creative writing for the Open College of the Arts and […]

Cove Park / Varuna Residency Exchange

Nicola White

We are delighted to announce the writer taking part in the 2022 residency exchange between Cove Park in Scotland and Varuna, the National Writer’s House in New South Wales, Australia. This residency allows one writer from Scotland to spend a month at Varuna and one writer from Australia to enjoy a month at Cove Park. […]

Cove Park / Varuna Residency Exchange

Jan Carson

In Autumn 2022, Cove Park former resident Jan Carson will spend four week at Varuna as part of the Cove Park / Varuna Residency Exchange Programme. Jan Carson is a writer and community arts facilitator based in East Belfast. Her debut novel, Malcolm Orange Disappears and short story collection, Children’s Children, were published by Liberties […]

Cove Park / Varuna Residency Exchange Programme