40: Forty years of the UTS Writers’ Anthology

Patti Miller’s story, ‘Pink Cakes’ is the titular work of the very first UTS Writers’ Anthology (1982) which appears alongside another of her stories, ‘Messages.’ Since studying at UTS, Miller has gone on to carve a successful writing life. She is the author of nine books including Australia’s best-selling life-writing texts, Writing Your Life, The Memoir Book and Writing True Stories (A&U) as well as a novel, Child (A&U) and five memoir/narrative non-fiction books: The Last One Who Remembers (A&U), Whatever The Gods Do (Random House), The Mind of a Thief (UQP)—winner of the 2013 NSW Premier’s Prize for History, Ransacking Paris (UQP) and most recently, The Joy of High Places (NewSouth).

Since his poem ‘Sepulcar’ was published in 1984’s Live from the War Zone, David Astle has been contorting words into cryptic puzzles and arranging them into two novels, several short plays and a stream of wordplay titles including Puzzled, Cluetopia, Riddleton and Rewording the Brain. Away from manuscripts, Astle has been dictionary umpire on the SBS gameshow Letters and Numbers and the regular language sleuth on ABC’s News Breakfast. ‘Wordplay’, Astle’s weekly plunge into English, appears in ‘Spectrum’ in the Sydney Morning Herald. Since 2019, he’s been the Evenings host on ABC Radio Melbourne.

Beth Yahp was both editor and author in the 1987 UTS Writers’ Anthology: 13 New Beginnings. Originally from Malaysia, Yahp is an award-winning author of fiction and non-fiction, whose work has been published in Australia and internationally. Her novel, The Crocodile Fury (Angus & Robertson 1992) was translated into several languages and her libretto, Moon Spirit Feasting, for composer Liza Lim, won the APRA Award for Best Classical Composition in 2003. Her latest publication is a collection of short stories, The Red Pearl and Other Stories (Vagabond Press 2017). Her travel memoir, Eat First, Talk Later (Penguin Random House 2015) was shortlisted for the 2018 Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature (Non-Fiction). Dr Yahp is a Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Sydney.

Chris Jones was a poet, artist and editor, and a vocal Sydney activist for gay rights and injecting drug users. During the ’70s and ’80s both his writing and art generated some of the community’s most recognisable statements, including the poster for the first Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, 1978. In 1992 his verse novel, The Times of Zenia Gold, received high praise from Dorothy Porter who described it as ‘full-frontal gay ghetto poetry’. Under Jones’ editorship, the NSW Users and AIDS Association newsletter evolved into the widely circulated magazine, NUAA News (later User’s News). In later years Jones relocated to Narrabri, then Soldiers Point. He passed away in 2013. His legacy continues.

Gillian Mears’ student writing was published in the 1987 UTS Writers’ Anthology. She wrote its foreword in 1991 and was later featured in the retrospective Thirteenth Floor (2000). After graduating from UTS, professional acclaim swiftly followed; her short story collections and novels winning major prizes. Mears’ first novel, The Mint Lawn (1991), won the 1990 The Australian/Vogel’s Literary Award. Her third novel, Foal’s Bread, was published by Allen & Unwin in 2011. It won The Prime Minister’s Award for Fiction, The Age Book of the Year for Fiction and the ALS Gold Medal, all awarded in 2012. It was shortlisted for The Indie Awards (2012), the Barbara Jefferis Award (2012), the Miles Franklin Literary Award (2012) and the ABIA Book of the Year (2012). Mears also published a children’s story, The Cat With the Coloured Tail (Walker Books Australia) and Paradise is a Place, a photo essay created in collaboration with Sydney photographer Sandy Edwards. She died at home in Grafton on 16 May 2016. She is sorely missed and remembered with loving gratitude.

During the three years that Toby Fitch was an undergraduate writer at UTS (2003–2005) his work was selected for every Anthology. ‘post’ was Fitch’s first piece, already showing evidence of his poetic interests. He published another short story in 2004 and a poem in 2005. In that year’s biography he swore that ‘now he’d finished studying he [would] probably go away again, eloping with words and never coming back.’ Academia hasn’t quite relinquished Fitch, however. He is now a Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Sydney (where he completed his Doctor of Arts), the poetry editor of Overland, editor of several poetry anthologies, and the director of AVANT GAGA and the Poetry Night at Sappho Books. He is the author of seven books of poetry, including Where Only the Sky had Hung Before and, most recently, Sydney Spleen (Giramondo 2021).

Alison Whittaker’s poem, ‘Two Curled Backs Two Bookends’ was published in the 2016 Anthology and she wrote the Foreword in 2019. A multi-tasking Gomeroi poet, essayist and legal academic, Whittaker is an essential voice in the literary world. She is currently a Senior Researcher at the Jumbunna Institute. Whittaker’s debut poetry collection Lemons in the Chicken Wire was awarded the State Library of Queensland’s black&write! Indigenous Writing Fellowship in 2015. Her second book Blakwork was shortlisted for the 2019 Prime Minister’s Literary Award. In 2020, she was the editor of the anthology Fire Front: First Nations poetry and power today. Whittaker was also the co-winner of the 2017 Overland Judith Wright Poetry Prize for ‘Many Girls White Linen’. She was the Indigenous Poet-in-Residence for the 2018 Queensland Poetry Festival. In 2017–2018, Whittaker was a Fulbright scholar at Harvard Law School, where she was named the Dean’s Scholar in Race, Gender and Criminal Law.

sydney khoo is a non-binary and queer writer, born in Australia to Malaysian-Chinese parents. Though typically drinking bubble tea in Cabramatta or reading fanfiction in a McDonald’s carpark, they can occasionally be found writing nonsense stories at cafés with their dog Gizmo. In addition to ‘I’m (Not) Lovin’ It’, khoo’s short works, ‘Collecting Stormwater for the Withering Drought’ and ‘肉骨茶 [Bak Kut Teh]’, were featured in the 2018 and 2019 UTS Writers’ Anthologies: Light Borrowers and Infinite Threads (respectively). khoo is the recipient of the 2019 Penguin Random House Fellowship and is working on their first YA novel The Spider and Her Demons. Their work can also be found in SWAMP magazine (2019), F(r)iction magazine (2020) and Aniko Press (2021).