Q&A with festival author Shady Cosgrove

The South Coast Readers & Writers Festival returns to Thirroul over three jam-packed days from 24 to 26 July. On the Saturday, author Shady Cosgrove will be appearing in a festival session titled 'Australia’s Literary Journals'.

Shady Cosgrove writes on unceded Dharawal land and teaches writing at the University of Wollongong. Her books include Flight (Gazebo Books, 2024) and This is What it Feels Like (Recent Works Press, 2025), an ekphrastic series written with four other writers.

Her short works have appeared in Best Australian Stories, Anthology of Australian Prose Poetry, Dreaming Awake, New Writing, TEXT, Animal Studies Journal, Cordite, Overland, Antipodes, Southerly, Island, takahe, Eunoia Review, and various Spineless Wonders collections. She has received an ANU HRC Fellowship, a Bundanon Artists Residency and the Varuna House Eleanor Dark Flagship Fellowship.

We asked Shady to tell us more about her reading and writing journey.

What are you reading, or working on, right now?

I’m reading Claire Keegan’s Foster, and I’m working on a bunch of projects right now – microfictions, prose poems, lyric essays, and longer works too. I have a novel that's waiting patiently for attention, but I keep getting distracted with exciting projects with other writers. That’s something I’ve really been enjoying – writing and thinking and creating in community. It’s transformed the way I think of process – instead of a solitary (work) venture it’s one predicated on excitement and joy. 

Tell us about your writing routine.

I'm the most engaged and excited by writing first thing in the morning. When I’m not teaching, I love to wake up, do yoga and then launch into whatever project I’m working on. I also like to end the day’s writing in the middle of a thought or an idea so I can pick it up straight away and keep going the next morning.

What is one book that changed your life?

I can’t limit it to one! My life was transformed by Jeanette Winterson’s The Passion, Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre and Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea.

Is there a writing project on your bucket list – something you would like to write one day?

No – if I want to write it, I get onto it straight away. Maybe that’s why I have so many projects on the boil, ha!

Is there another session at the SCRWF (other than your own, of course!) you’re most excited to catch?

Absolutely! I’m really excited to check out the Five Islands’ Poetry Showcase – I love Linda Godfrey’s work. Evelyn Araluen in Conversation will be thought-provoking, too, and A Centenary of Books with Joshua Lobb, Christine Howe and Ellie Crookes should be fascinating. They are all such interesting thinkers – I love their perspectives on literature and writing.

Australia's Literary Journals

Saturday, 25 July, 1:15–2:10pm

The Australian literary journal sector is in flux — Meanjin was shuttered and then relocated, Southerly was reborn, and the landscape keeps shifting. Chaired by Peter Frankis, this panel brings together two editors, James Jiang of the Sydney Review of Books and Shady Cosgrove of Text, to unpack what's happening in literary and scholarly publishing, and why journals remain so vital to Australia's literary ecosystem. Presented by Sydney Review of Books.

Book tickets here and find the full program on the SCWC website.