Cat Yen, 2026 writer-in-residence
Proudly the daughter of factory and retail workers with no creative credentials, Cat Yen is interested in unearthing the complexity of gendered and working-class experiences of everyday life, especially those of people of colour.
She was the winner of the SBS Emerging Writers’ Competition in 2021 and a Wheeler Centre Hot Desk Fellow in 2024.
Cat says that, as the daughter of working class Chinese immigrants, she had her own unique challenges when it came to pursuing her dreams.
Cat is a writer of memoir, but she doesn’t like the genre label, as it infers she’s writing in a linear, documentary form.
“But for example, at the moment I write about finding joy in difficult times,” says Cat.
“It’s lovely to write in a place where there is beauty and a lot of human activity.”
“I’m writing about not-so-beautiful subjects, so it helps to be in a place that balances that out. You can emerge from deep writing and get air and light to recover. It’s like a balm.”
“My studio at the Convent is relatively bare. It has beautiful light, and view over the rooftops of the old bakery.
Before she secured the Convent writer’s residency, Cat was writing from cafes, and sometimes at home, as well as for a period at the Wheeler Centre.
“But I don’t like doing my writing from the same place that I do my ‘day job’. I’m a data analyst. I do a lot of coding. So, I like to separate that data work from my creative work.”
Cat laughs that people are surprised that she is a data analyst.
“Data analysis and coding is a skill, just like anything. You can learn it.”
Still early in her literary career, Cat Yen is already expanding what Australian writing can hold. Working-class memory, migrant inheritance, gendered complexity, joy alongside grief.
In the quiet light of her Convent studio, overlooking rooftops that have witnessed generations of labour and change, she is finishing a manuscript that refuses neat categories.
Abbotsford Convent is proud to support a writer who not only tells stories, but reshapes the space in which those stories can exist.
Applications for the next round of Writers’ Residencies close 11.59pm, Sunday 15 March 2026 (AEDT).
The Convent Writers Residence Program offers writers dedicated time, space, and support to develop literary and written work within a beautiful heritage-listed setting. Designed to enable focused creative development, the residency provides an environment where writers can deepen their practice and advance a project.