Announcing the new Mascara team ….
Laura Pettenuzzo: Junior Commissioning Editor
Laura (she/her) is a disabled writer living on Wurundjeri country. She writes Plain and Easy English content for various organisations and has been published by The Big Issue, ABC Everyday, The Age and SBS Voices. Laura is also a member of the Victorian Disability Advisory Council.
Beau Windon: First Nations Commissioning Editor
Beau Windon is a neurodivergent author of Wiradjuri heritage based in Naarm. He writes quirky stories about quirky people (including his quirky self) and poetry about all of the dark goo washing over his mind. He has been awarded a 2021 Writeability Fellowship, a 2022 residency from the City of Melbourne, and an arts grant from the Australia Council for the Arts. Beau’s further creative non-fiction has had him shortlisted in three categories for the Lord Mayor’s Creative Writing Awards: winning the Self-Told Stories by Writers Living with Disability category and getting runner-up for the Indigenous Life Stories category. Recently, he was one of the winners of Griffith Review’s Emerging Voices 2023 competition. Beau has had personal essays published in Griffith Review, Island, Archer, Mascara’s Resilience Anthology, VICE, Dear Lover, and Writer’s Victoria. You can find out more about him at: www.beauwindon.com
Katie Hansord: Senior Researcher
Katie Hansord is a writer and researcher living in Naarm (Melbourne). Her book Colonial Australian Women Poets: Political Voice and Feminist Traditions (Anthem 2021) examines nineteenth century women’s poetry in the contexts of colonialism, imperialism, and their relationships to gender. Her writing has been published in ALS, Hecate, Mascara, AJVS, and JASAL, as well as Journal and the Long Paddock, Southerly Journal.
Misbah Wolf: Prose Editor
Misbah Wolf, a multi-dimensional artist has a Masters in Creative Writing from the University of QLD and post-graduate qualifications in Research Methods, resides on Wurundjeri land.
Wolf, the author of Rooftops in Karachi (Vagabond Press 2018), shortlisted in the Thomas Shapcott Prize, and Carapace (Vagabond Press 2022). She has been active in poetry for over 15 years, participating in Queensland Poetry Festival, the Emerging Writers’ Festival and the Sydney Writers Festival. She also contributed to the Melbourne Fringe Festival 2019 as a costume and art developer for theater. Wolf was awarded a Creative Victoria Grant in 2022.
Duane Leewai: Graphic Designer
Duane Leewai is a Dharug-based graphic artist, illustrator and art director. Born in Fiji he is of Indian, Chinese and iTaukei descent. Duane studied at TAFE Queensland (Southbank Campus) and graduated with certificates in Visual Arts and Animation, Printing and Graphics.
Michelle Cahill: Artistic Director
Michelle Cahill (she/they) is of Goan Anglo-Indian heritage living on unceded Guringai lands. An award-winning novelist and poet, their collection Letter to Pessoa (Giramondo) won the UTS Glenda Adams Award and was shortlisted in the Steele Rudd Award. Cahill was awarded a Red Room Poetry Fellowship and was shortlisted in the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award, the ABR Peter Porter Prize and the ABR Elizabeth Jolley Prize. Daisy & Woolf is published with Hachette. Cahill’s essays have appeared in the Sydney Review of Books, The Weekend Australian and Wasafari