Established in 2025, The Convent Writers Residency Program offers writers dedicated time, space and support to develop literary and written work within our beautiful heritage-listed setting.
Designed to enable focused creative development, the Residencies provide an environment where writers can deepen their practice and advance a project.
This year, we’re thrilled to introduce:
Nalini Jacob-Roussety
Apr — Jun 2026.
What if the Trolley Problem came to life, but it was your best friends who were on the tracks?
Nalini is a Melbourne-based writer and educator and the Philosopher-in-Residence at ethics literary magazine After Dinner Conversation. Her writing explores political and ethical complexities with contemporary humour, and has recently appeared in Overland, Cosmic Horror Monthly, and Fraidy Cat Quarterly. Additionally, she was awarded the Faber Writing Academy scholarship from Allen & Unwin for her first novel, Old Arts.
During her residency, Nalini will be working on Old Arts, which follows an intimate group of philosophy students at an elite university who violently turn against each other when their eccentric professor begins staging real-life ethical dilemmas. Through her writing practice, Nalini will interrogate how moral identity is constructed within colonial institutions that claim authority over truth and knowledge, and explore how easily ethical ideals can collapse when tested by real consequences.
Ernest Price
Jul — Sep 2026.
Ernest Price is transgender man living and writing on Bunurong land. His debut novel The Pyramid of Needs was published by Affirm Press in 2024. It is a dark, wry and deeply illuminating examination of family dynamics in a world full of division and misinformation. His creative nonfiction has been published by Overland and Queerstories. By day, he teaches high school English.
Throughout his Residency, Ernest will continue the development of Complicit, a novel about a teenager’s act of white supremacy told through the perspectives of those around him, exploring community, connection and young people’s engagement with divisive politics.
Mindy Gill
Oct — Dec 2026.
Mindy Gill is an award-winning poet, editor and critic, and recipient of the Queensland Premier’s Young Writers and Publishers Award. Mindy has received fellowships from the CMI Arts Initiative in Chennai and the Australian Poetry/NAHR Poetry Fellowship in the Val Taleggio, amongst others. Her poetry has most recently appeared in Australian Book Review, Griffith Review, and The Penguin Book of Indian Poets. She is Australian Book Review’s fifth Rising Star, and has written essays and criticism for Griffith Review, Sydney Review of Books and Meanjin. In 2025 she was shortlisted for the Glendower Award for an Emerging Queensland Writer.
Mindy will use her Residency to finalise her debut poetry collection, Confessions, a five-part transnational work which explores themes of identity and belonging, love and its dissolution, illness and recovery.Confessions received the 2025 Thomas Shapcott Poetry Prize and will be published with University of Queensland Press in 2027.
