The third edition of Written Off features art curation by Stuart Bailey and ten local authors works. Supporting independent Australian Creatives and Writing.
Excerpt of Works
Self Portrait
“Who sees the human face correctly: the photographer, the mirror, or the painter?”
— Pablo Picasso…
Carley Cappielli
Carly Cappielli is a Western Sydney-based writer who is passionate about contributing to the area’s experimental writing scene. Carly completed her Master of Research at Western Sydney University in 2018, where she also completed her Doctor of Creative Arts in 2023. Her first book, Listurbia, won the 2019 Seizure Viva La Novella Prize and was published by Brio Books. Carly is currently working on a full length novel exploring the use and effects of gaps in the creation of fictional worlds.
four poems
We have to escape this place, my love
This place of such prodigious greed
Of human filth and misery
where my father drew his last…
Jason Gray
Jason Gray is a Mauritian-Australian author living on unceded Wongal land, and the winner (2012) and judge (2018-2019) of Zine West Word. He has published and read widely, including Seasons (2025), Overland (2023), Avant Gaga at Sappho’s (2023 and 2019), Liminal Mag’s Collisions (2020), Zine West (2018, 2015, 2014, 2011, 2009), Griffith Review (2017) and Seizure (2014). He was the recipient of a West Words Varuna Fellowship (2018) and long-listed for the University of Canberra Vice-Chancellor’s International Poetry Prize (2023).
Twitter: @jasongray85 | Instagram: @connectionrevolution
LOOK AT THIS PHOTOGRAPH
Everyone in the 9-FE class at Macquarie Hills High School knew Mr C hated Nickelback
but in a weird, performative millennial way
like the musical version of telling us he was “adulting”…
Benjamin D. Muir
Benjamin D. Muir is a reformed juvenile delinquent from unceded Dharug land (Penrith). He is a prize-winning writer, casual academic, researcher, editor and six-time failed metalcore musician. His novel, The McMillan Diaries, forthcoming (still), was recipient of the 2019 AAWP/UWAP Meniscus Chapter One Prize. His work has appeared in SBS Australia, Studio Stories via FBI Radio’s Or It Didn’t Happen, Antipodean Science Fiction, The Conversation, Affirmations: of the Modern, Written Off and several anthologies. He holds a doctorate from Western Sydney University, where he teaches literature and creative writing casually, and works odd jobs to make up for the holiday periods. He is co-director and assistant editor of Vitagraph Publishing and Written Off.
You can find him on socials at @benjamindmuir or via his website, benjamindmuir.com
I killed God but I still don’t know who won the game
The day I killed God began like any other. There is a certain degree of, well, certainty in how we appraise the inevitable passage of time, and an equal certainty in the assumed stability of foundational myths, figures, and metaphysical preconceptions…
Benjamin D. Muir
Benjamin D. Muir is a reformed juvenile delinquent from unceded Dharug land (Penrith). He is a prize-winning writer, casual academic, researcher, editor and six-time failed metalcore musician. His novel, The McMillan Diaries, forthcoming (still), was recipient of the 2019 AAWP/UWAP Meniscus Chapter One Prize. His work has appeared in SBS Australia, Studio Stories via FBI Radio’s Or It Didn’t Happen, Antipodean Science Fiction, The Conversation, Affirmations: of the Modern, Written Off and several anthologies. He holds a doctorate from Western Sydney University, where he teaches literature and creative writing casually, and works odd jobs to make up for the holiday periods. He is co-director and assistant editor of Vitagraph Publishing and Written Off.
You can find him on socials at @benjamindmuir or via his website, benjamindmuir.com
Park Life
They milled, her nose attached, wolfish, to his hole. She was fifteen, he was three. Later, she ate a stick, jaw raised to the sky, in that gaping hound-way, long-nosed and rapacious, flashing her teeth and mouth cave…
Miro Bilbrough
Miro Bilbrough is a filmmaker, writer and poet whose memoir of a counter-culture New Zealand adolescence, In the Time of the Manaroans was shortlisted for the Douglas Stewart Prize for Non-Fiction 2021. She wrote and directed the feature films Being Venice (2012) and Floodhouse (2004), an adaptation of Herman Melville’s Bartleby (2001), and the ciné-poem Urn (1995). She has a Doctorate of Creative Arts from the Writing and Society Research Centre, WSU, and makes her living as a script editor and lecturer in screenwriting.
Vjera’s Fur
Pero stepped onto the tram and tried to recall the last time he made his way to Zagreb. He had been a boy from the village and the Purgari, (Zagreb-born), looked down on him…
Jelena Curic
Jelena Curic is a writer of literary fiction, crime, and comedy. She is also the resident Diva in the Croatian community, singing most weekends. A 2023 Westwords Alumni, her stories can be found in Westwords Bad Western Sydney Anthology, Bad Western Sydney. The Second Case, Living Stories the Other City, and Short Stories Unlimited Leaving Home Anthology. She was shortlisted for the Born Writers
Award 2023/2024. She has read at Bravewords Live True Stories Told Well, was a panellist at BAD Crime Festival 2024, alongside Candace Fox and Dinuka McKenzie and was accepted into the 2024 Accelerator program with Westwords and Parramatta Council. Her debut novel, Sing To Me, will be released in 2025 through Westwords Books.
An extract from Craigie
Cunts reckon they love Craigie cos he blew up the Prime Minister. Cunts reckon they love Craigie cos he loved cars.…
Patrick Marlborough
Patrick Marlborough is an underemployed writer/comedian/musician/drongo living with their parents in Walyalup, Western Australia. They have been published in Vice, Rolling Stone, The Guardian, The Saturday Paper, Slate, Gawker, Meanjin, Crikey, Kotaku, The Lifted Brow, Kill Your Darlings, Cordite, Going Down Swinging, and various other forgotten blogs, magazines, and anthologies. The manuscript for their first novel, A Horse Held at Gunpoint, was shortlisted for the Fogarty Literary Award in 2021 and is still looking for a publisher. They are the founder and editor of The Yeah Nah Review, as well as Wharf Rat Press. They co-author all of their work with their bad dog, Buckley, who is solely responsible for any problematic elements therein
Trinity
Alice watched a trapped moth flinging itself around inside a fluorescent panel on the
ceiling of Merrylands Medical Centre.
Geneva Valek
Geneva Valek is a queer playwright and prose writer who aims to illuminate the humour and magic of the everyday while exploring themes like class, plus-size politics and feminism. Her work has been performed at Queerstories and Sydney Writers Festival, and published in the Star Observer, Zinewest, Writing Parramatta and many more. Her first work for the stage, The Ozempic Diaries will debut in the Heartland Festival at Riverside Theatre with the National Theatre of Parramatta in June of 2025
Four Poems
I know who I am only in relation
to you, Mother.
Your perpetual barbs hold up a mirror:
a lazy, inconsiderate ingrate
J Marahuyo
J. Marahuyo is a neurodivergent Filipino-Australian award winning poet residing on Dharug country. She was shortlisted for the Newcastle Poetry Prize 2024, won the Writing NSW- Varuna Fellowship 2024 and won the Living Stories Prize 2024. Her debut collection, which explores themes of identity, mental health and the power of vulnerability, will be released early 2025 by WestWords Books. Her work can be found in Cordite Poetry Review, The Suburban Review and FemAsia. When she’s not writing you can find her pspsp-ing random cats or getting on the wrong train.
Her instagram is @j_marahuyo and website: jmarahuyo.com
Katya’s Kvity
The rolling metal door got stuck half-way as she tried to pull it up. Kateryna squatted down and gave it a shove with her shoulder…
Pete Shmigel
Pete Shmigel is a writer in Western Sydney, Australia. He was born and raised in Biarwood (Queens, New York) to Ukrainian refugee parents. Pete’s background is in politics, business, recycling, social enterprise, and mental health. His essays are widely published by major Australian newspapers and journals. Pete is a lifelong New York Mets fan. Because there’s always next year.
Essay: Aporia: Unlearning Short Story Comprehension
As the Argentine story writer Julio Cortázar pointed out, the written story (as a new literary form) became popular at the same time as the photograph, which in some ways it resembles.…
Soren Tae Smith
Soren Tae Smith is a writer and a teacher in the Creative Writing program at the University of Melbourne. She has written for Southerly, TEXT, Antipodes, Antithesis and Written Off, and her creative non-fiction has been longlisted by The Lifted Brow. Her book Honey from the Ground won the Barrow Street Press prize for an unpublished non-fiction manuscript in 2023, judged by Mary Cappello, and is forthcoming with MUP in 2025.
Notes from the Artist
Bailey’s practice critiques political and subcultural resistance, often through the lens of the political poster….
Stuart Bailey
Stuart Bailey works across media including printmaking, sculpture, and installation. He engages with a kind of disconnection between political awareness and actions. Employing emotional reactions to political imperatives, his response is more idiosyncratic than activist. Stuart studied Printmedia at Canberra School of Art, ANU and Kyoto Seika University, Japan and works as an artist, educator and curator. He completed his Doctor of Philosophy at Sydney College of the Arts, University of Sydney in 2014 where he currently lectures in contemporary art
Details
Release Date: 30th April 2025
64 pages, softcover
Edition Artist
Stuart Bailey
Stuart Bailey works across media including printmaking, sculpture, and installation. He engages with a kind of disconnection between political awareness and actions. Employing emotional reactions to political imperatives, his response is more idiosyncratic than activist. Stuart studied Printmedia at Canberra School of Art, ANU and Kyoto Seika University, Japan and works as an artist, educator and curator. He completed his Doctor of Philosophy at Sydney College of the Arts, University of Sydney in 2014 where he currently lectures in contemporary art