Winner, Sydney Morning Herald Best Young Australian Novelists, 2024

John Morrissey is a Melbourne writer of Kalkadoon descent. His work has been published in Overland, Voiceworks, Meanjin and the anthology This All Come Back Now. He was the winner of the 2020 Indigenous Writers Mentorship and the runner-up for the 2018 Nakata Brophy Prize. His debut story collection Firelight won the Queensland Literary Awards Steele Rudd Award for a Short Story Collection, 2024 and Best Collection in the Aurealis Awards, 2023. Firelight was shortlisted for the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Fiction, 2024 and both the Indigenous Writers’ Prize and UTS Glenda Adams Award for New Writing in the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards, 2024. John Morrissey was named one of the Sydney Morning Herald Best Young Novelists of 2024. Bird Deity is his first full-length novel.

Find out more about John Morrissey