New Professor’s arrival crowns a year of success for Creative Writing at UTS

There are not many professors of writing who can count among their achievements publication in The New Yorker, multiple national writing awards, hosting a books podcast with an ex-Prime Minister, and featuring on a cult Australian band’s T-shirt.

Professor Sarah Holland-Batt, an award-winning poet, editor and critic, will bring a wealth of knowledge and experience to UTS when she commences as Head of Creative Writing in October. The Jaguar, her third book of poetry, was a national bestseller and won major awards including the 2023 Stella Prize and the 2023 Queensland Premier's Award for State Significance, and her second book, The Hazards, won the Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Poetry. She is a passionate public advocate for poetry and has also written a weekly newspaper column on how to read and love contemporary poetry for The Australian which was subsequently published as a book in 2021.

Holland-Batt is also an aged-care advocate, who has written extensively about aged care and addressed the 2018 royal commission into the sector. Her current research sits at the nexus of health and creative writing, exploring how literature and arts-based research methods may help address societal prejudices and taboos about ageing, death and aged care. She also brings deep industry links to UTS, including fresh appointments to the Councils of Writing Australia and the National Library this year. 

Of her appointment to UTS, Holland-Batt says: “I’m so delighted to be joining the brilliant, vibrant and inspiring group of writers teaching and working at UTS. UTS has an incredible history of fostering and supporting the careers of many of Australia’s great writers through its exceptional Creative Writing program and has always been a wonderful champion of creative practice and the arts. It’s an honour to be part of Creative Writing’s next chapter at UTS, and to have the opportunity to work with such talented and committed colleagues and students to support future generations of Australian writers and extend UTS’s legacy as one of Australia’s preeminent Creative Writing programs.”

This appointment crowns a year of successes for the discipline, which Acting Head of Discipline Dr Delia Falconer describes as “unprecedented” in its 50-year history. “There are so many books from alumni and staff this year that we have been able to program our own UTS writers’ festival in November to celebrate them all.”

Later this year, Lecturer Dr Andrew Pippos will launch his second novel, The Transformations, set in the vanishing world of nineties newspaper newsrooms while Senior Lecturer Dr Sarah Attfield has just published a groundbreaking study of class in Australian literature. Earlier this year, tutor Gretchen Shirm’s fourth novel Out of the Woods, which is set at the Hague trial of a war criminal, was shortlisted for two major literary awards while tutor Anne Casey’s collection of poetry, Seang (Hungering) was published by prestigious Irish Press, Salmon.

In 2025, three alumni are also publishing first books—two as writers, and one as a publisher. Judi Morison’s Secrets is published by Simon&Schuster’s new Bundyi imprint and Verity Borthwick’s Hollow Air, which she commenced during her degree, by Ultimo Press. Alumna Emily Riches, the founder of Aniko Press, is also publishing its first book: The Slip by Miriam Webster. 

In November the discipline will launch its annual UTS Writers’ Anthology, a national reviewed and distributed collection of student writing, now in its 464h year and  coordinated by Lecturer Dr Claire Corbett, the fiction editor of Overland. 

This follows on the heels of the successes of Dr Graham Akhurst, whose debut gothic-horror YA novel Borderland, was a 2024 Children’s Book Council ‘Notable Book’ among other successes, and the publication of Dr Delia Falconer’s Signs and Wonders, the national Nib Award winner of 2021. 

Professor Holland-Batt says of these achievements: “The best pathway to a successful writing career is having outstanding writers and readers as your mentors. The extraordinary successes of UTS’s alumni and staff not only show that UTS is at the vanguard of Creative Writing in Australia, but they also speak to the outstanding calibre of our teaching and mentorship, and the sense of community among the writers who call UTS home. Congratulations to all our colleagues and alumni whose successes we celebrate, and who each have made their own distinctive contribution to the legacy of Creative Writing at UTS.”