Empty Sky: 2020 UTS Writers’ Anthology
About this ebook
The smoky sky is empty: a deficit of light and sound, devoid of sentience…or is it?
Our world is tumultuous – from political upheaval to environmental decay, the Earth is in the process of shifting and reforming. Technology surrounds us, encroaching. Society both evolves and regresses. 2020 was dealt a somewhat cruel hand: fires swept through Australia and the COVID-19 pandemic permeated every aspect of our lives.
In one way or another, struggle is a part of us. These pieces depict precisely that. There is fantastic struggle against the self and the world and whoever is listening, and in this way, these works cry out to be read. They show that human lives are full: full of fighting and grief, full of compassion and joy. Full to the brim.
The 34th UTS Writers’ Anthology: the 2020 collection of some of the best new writing – previously unpublished – from a student body with an incredible voice.
Each year the UTS Writers’ Anthology showcases the best work from one of Australia’s most prestigious writing programs. This year’s anthology includes prose, fiction, poetry and screenplays from talented emerging writers including Christine Afoa, Ruth Armstrong, Sara Borman, Sally Breen, Alex Bulahoff, Shana Chandra, Daniel Comensoli, Olivia Costa, Daniel Date, Mark Gerts, Shoshana Gottlieb, Echo He, Sydney Khoo, ZA Knowles, Sam McAlpine, Helen Meany, David Naylor, Joseph Schwarzkopf, Amy Shapiro, Jack Cameron Stanton, EM Tasker and Tanya Vavilova.
Ratings and reviews
About the author
Zachary Agius is an avid reader and filmgoer trying to become a writer and filmmaker. He has a stack of unproduced scripts that’ll hopefully find their way to your screens someday.
Zohra Aly has lived on four continents and travelled widely. She has worked as a pharmacist and written articles for the Sydney Morning Herald, Sunday Life magazine and MiNDFOOD. Her first essay was published in the Sydney Review of Books last year. She is nearly at the end of her Creative Writing Masters at UTS.
Keira Baker is a Sydney-based writer in her final year of a Media Production and Creative Writing degree at UTS. When she grows up she wants to live at the top of a very dark and stormy tower.
Eva Baxter is in her final year of a Bachelor in Creative Writing and Journalism. Her work has been published once before, in primary school, a poem titled ‘poem’, about how annoying her older sister was. Her sister is better now. Eva still writes about people who annoy her.
Arielle Bodenstein lives on the Hawkesbury River and is in her second year of study at UTS. She loves writing stories about people. She hates writing bios. ‘The Otolith’ is her first piece of published work.
Verity Borthwick has previously been published in The Best Australian Stories 2017, Island, and the UTS Writers’ Anthology. She started writing in her spare time during her PhD in geology so she didn’t go mad. Verity currently spends her days taking care of her two sons and writing in the in-between spaces.
Chris Cameron. A man of no real significance or consequence. The kind of guy who still yells, ‘Taxi!’ when he hears a glass break at a bar. Came to writing through a half-finished PhD in philosophy and suffered through finance and economics in the ignorance of his youth. Still yet to write anything that is as good as it sounds in his head.
Lily Cameron is an emerging writer and editor based in Sydney’s inner west. Her work predominantly focuses on simple representative moments, often exploring queer identities and experiences. Her writing has appeared in Voiceworks, The Brag, Filter and elsewhere.
Robert Carter is currently completing a Master of Arts in Creative Writing at UTS and his first novel. He is an assistant principal in a Sydney primary school and lives in the Sutherland Shire. He has a large collection of vinyl records and will beat you in Pink Floyd trivia. Robert has appeared on the cover of Men’s Health magazine … actually, no, he hasn’t.
Tom Disalvo is a writer of short fiction and poetry whose work has previously appeared on the UTS website. This is the first time his writing will make it to print, and his mum has already pre-ordered two copies for everyone she knows (as has he).
Clare Doughty is a Creative Writing Honours student. She’s interested in the functions and forms of non-fiction texts, and in 2019 was a participant in Express Media’s writing program, Toolkits: Memoir.
Zoe Downing is an aspiring crime writer based in Sydney. When she’s not writing about herself in the third person she likes to play golf and visit cold places. She’s currently completing an MA in Creative Writing at UTS and working on a novel inspired by her time living in the French Alps.
Jazzlyn Innes is a debut writer, currently living by the coast of Newcastle. She studies Creative Writing at UTS, sharing stories and learning from the people she meets. She loves tending to her indoor plant collection, as well as passionately crafting works of short fiction and free-verse poetry.
Alexander Jan Barendregt is in the last year of his Bachelor of Creative Writing at UTS. He exists in a semi-permanent state of terror and spends his time either writing stories or procrastinating from writing stories. He puts these stories on https://collinfrisbee.home.
John Kilbey is a writer interested in combining classic story elements with modern themes to produce narratives that are both funny and thought provoking. He completed his autobiography at age ten, although in retrospect, got nearly all the details wrong.
Andrea Kovacic is a twenty-one year-old writer spending her days on the coastal fringe of New South Wales, alongside her five rescued greyhounds, two ponies and a cat. Her daily life, living sleepily within a domestic zoo, often inspires her fiction. She is currently studying her fourth year of Law and Creative Writing at UTS.
Alec Le-Grand is a non-binary writer, editor and drag artist. Usually found across Oxford Street and Sydney’s inner west supporting inclusive queer events, they also spend time outside of the nightlife reflecting, writing and rallying about issues at the intersection of queerness, environmentalism and decolonisation. You can follow their escapades on all platforms @_cloverfields_.
Lucia Mai is currently studying Law and Creative Writing at UTS, which is a bit like when Troy Bolton decides to major in dancing and basketball at the end of High School Musical 3: Senior Year. Lucia’s talent is being able to fit her fist in her mouth, although this is inadvisable during public health crises.
Grace McManus is a writer (in the sense that she can sort of string words together) and an editor (in the sense that she can tell there’s always something wrong with those words). She’s in her third year of a Creative Writing degree.
Judi Morison writes short fiction, poetry and creative nonfiction, and is working on her second novel while waiting for a publisher to snap up her first. She is also editorial assistant for Dreaming Inside: Voices from Junee Correctional Centre, an annual anthology of writing by Aboriginal inmates.
Caroline Rannard is a Sydney-based writer and community radio producer. Her work has been published in Vertigo, and she won the 2020 Iceland Writers Retreat Writing Competition.
Amanda Rosso Buckton is a Sydney-based writer who explores the itsy-bitsyness of everyday life through essays and creative non-fiction. She is completing her Masters in Creative Writing at UTS, but is increasingly distracted.
In primary school, Sophie Katherine Serafim was praised for her outstanding communication skills. Encouraged by this positive feedback, she is now undergoing a Bachelor of Communications (Creative Writing) and Bachelor of Arts International Studies (Japanese). Her primary school reports mention that she should revise her understanding of 3D shapes.
Clare Shiu is a Hong Kong-born Sydneysider teaching English literature in high school. Most of her days are spent reading, writing and marking with her dog Frankie curled at her feet. ‘The Tofu Man’ is her first published work.
Despite habitually exceeding the word limit throughout her academic life, Samantha Todd has collected a few degrees; most recently, her Masters of Arts in Creative Writing at UTS. She recently gave up teaching high school English to coach and manage an aerial silk studio, because ‘joining the circus’ felt more in tune with her childhood dreams. She is currently working on a climate fiction fantasy novel for young adults, and preferred it when her writing was classified as dystopian escapism rather than current affairs.
Lily Velez is a Law and Creative Writing student writing characters who live in this strange contemporary landscape, championing women’s sport and learning about climate law and policy. You can find her writing and love of literature on Instagram @howyouspendyourlove.
Harry Webber is a Sydney-based, Newcastle-bred writer who works as an editor for an online music and pop culture magazine. In between attending live music events in pubs and clubs around town, he is currently completing a Master of Arts in Creative Writing.
Georgia Wilde is an emerging writer from Sydney and former editor of Vertigo magazine. One day she hopes to write something that makes someone replay her words in their mind again and again, unshakeable as a good taste or a bad smell.
C. Winspear is a speculative fiction author who recently won first place in the US-based Writers of the Future Contest. His short stories ‘The Market’ and ‘No More Piano Lessons’ have placed in awards here in Australia, and his novel The Lightreaders won the Writing NSW Varuna Fellowship 2017. He is currently seeking an agent to represent his high-fantasy novel 1001 Nights under the Sun. You may learn more about him at cwinspear.com.
