Details
Release Date: 30th September 2025
61 pages, softcover
Edition Artist
Andjana Pachkova
Born in Ukraine, Andjana Pachkova comes from a traditional Russian art tutoring background. Following the political shifts of Perestroika, she moved to Moscow, where she began formal art training through classes at the Stroganov Acade
my of Industrial and Applied Arts. Alongside this, she pursued legal studies and went on to complete a Bachelor of Law at Moscow International University in 1998. In 1997, Pachkova was awarded the prestigious Davis Fellowship, which enabled her to move to the United States for postgraduate study. She earned a Master of Arts in Liberal Studies from Dartmouth College in 2000—where
she also undertook art courses—followed by a Master of Law from Harvard University in 2001. During this period, she continued to deepen her artistic practice, also taking courses at New York University (NYU). Her work grew out of a deep interest in human relationships to place and landscape, particularly the subtle psychological transformations that occur as people move through and between environments. After relocating to Australia in 2013, Andjana formalised her art training by completing a Diploma of Visual Arts at Northbridge Visual Art School in 2014. She has since exhibited regularly in Sydney, presenting four solo exhibitions with
Stanley Street Gallery.
The fourth edition of Written Off features art by Andjana Pachkova and ten local authors works. Supporting independent Australian Creatives and Writing.
Excerpt of Works
Walk you Home
There is linoleum and it sticks to my feet. You know how kids, just by virtue of youth,are always kind of clammy? Yeah, it sticks….
Therese Kendall
Therese Kendall writes notes poetry on her phone, with experience excelling in the completely unrelated industries of healthcare and administration. Previously unpublished, although with two very nice rejection emails from two poetry competitions, and ungraduated from high school. Passionate about football injuries, collecting human information, and speculation (all kinds).
Theseus Considers Committing Misdemeanors
On that evening the surface of this lake rippled with the surfacing of all the fish living within. I sat beside my parents on the gritty beach halfway between sand and soil, watching….
Harvey Liu
Harvey Liu s a fiction writer and editor of Chinese-Australian background working on Darug and Gadigal land. He has completed a Masters of Creative Writing at the University of Sydney, with a focus on short fiction set in the Sydney suburbs. He is the founder and editor of Locative Magazine, an online publication for new Australian fiction and poetry. His writing has been published in Peril Magazine, Cicerone Journal, and the Ghost Cities anthology as part of The Writing Zone program run by Western Sydney University.
Hamarita
Sheena Schwartz was a firebrand (or a marauding demon, depending on whom you asked). Paving the way for the widespread allowance of women to take on full combatant roles in the Israeli Defence Force, her military exploits during the Intifadas were legendary (or textbook examples of war crimes enacted with utter impunity, depending on whom you asked)….
Dr Jimmie Unbrand
Jimmy Unbrand is the nom de plume, or alter ego, of another middling Western Sydney writer and researcher when they’re sleep deprived and manic, and take too many stimulants to compensate (described as, “to that writer what The Great Cornholio is to Beavis, or what Slim Shady is to Eminem and Marshall Mathers”). Unbrand is a proud survivor of gangstalking, Mossad, CIA, NSA, ASIO, and MI6 surveillance (and innumerable psyops), and has thrown more than one cell phone into the ocean to escape their rapacious gaze. If you are chosen, he may contact you with a cryptic message instructing you to “follow the white rabbit.” Subsequently, he will give you the choice of two pills (Xanax or Dexamphetamine) which you must chase with a crisp White Monster Zero Ultra. He has won a manuscript prize, but still nobody will publish his 200,000+ word trash epic, which one reviewer described as, “proof that technical ambition doth not a good novel make.” Unbrand stands with First Nations people, and against colonialism, Zionism, fascism, AI, and “Industrial Society.” This bio was provided via what appeared to be a half-brick thrown through one of our editors’ windows overnight. The “brick,” upon being carbon dated predates the planet’s formation. A message (written in lipstick on the mirrored door of a now-emptied medicine cabinet) assures that they’re not an individual, but rather, an idea.
The Great Masturbator
This happened more than Frankie would ever admit. He would be dispatched somewhere away from home, like the supermarket he was now roaming, and he would shiver as an erotic state awoke within him.
Jack Cameron Stanton
Jack Cameron Stanton is a fiction writer and critic from Sydney. He teaches creative writing. His recent stories have explored relationships through technology.
Island of the Old Shabandar
Rahmat felt his stomach lurch as he pulled at the oars of the lancaran warship. In synchrony with him were the practiced arms of two hundred men, their bare chests misted with ocean spray.
KT Major
KT Major is an emerging writer born in Singapore based in Sydney. She writes fiction, poetry, and essays exploring Asian-Australian perspectives. KT’s stories have won several accolades, including most recently the 2025 Louie Award for crime writing. She was awarded the WestWords-Varuna Emerging Writers’ Residency in 2024, and her writing has appeared in publications including The Big Issue, Splinter, Verandah, Emergence by SBS, Grieve, BAD Western Sydney, and ZineWest.
All Expenses Paid: A Note of Rest and Relaxation
Mercedes quit a month later. It was her second job selling tech solutions for large enterprises, one of those gigs I couldn’t understand no matter the times she explained her KPIs to me….
Deborah Prospero
Deborah Prospero lives, works, and writes on Dharug Country in Sydney’s West. Currently pursuing a masters of research, she is an intersectional feminist of Uruguayan and Chinese-Australian heritage with a keen interest in writing about people and their placemaking stories. With work featured in Refinery29, MoreThanMelanin, Locative Magazine, and the Mamiwatta Collections Journal, Deborah weaves her lived experience into cultural commentary. In 2025, Deborah won the ‘My Place in Cumberland’ Story
Competition and was a recipient of the 2024 Varuna x Whitlam Institute Essay Residency.
This Train
JANE stands on the edge of an empty platform. Waiting.
Vanessa Bates
Vanessa Bates is an award-winning playwright for stage and radio and also writes for film and television. She has been an affiliate playwright of the Sydney Theatre Company and Griffin Theatre with plays also produced by Malthouse, Deckchair and Vitalstatistix Theatre. Her work has won the NSW Premier’s Literary Award and been shortlisted for the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award, the Patrick White Playwright Award, and the Griffin Award.
This Train 2
JANE stands on a railway platform. She is holding a new looking timetable which she appears to be studying.
Vanessa Bates
Vanessa Bates is an award-winning playwright for stage and radio and also writes for film and television. She has been an affiliate playwright of the Sydney Theatre Company and Griffin Theatre with plays also produced by Malthouse, Deckchair and Vitalstatistix Theatre. Her work has won the NSW Premier’s Literary Award and been shortlisted for the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award, the Patrick White Playwright Award, and the Griffin Award.
Rocks, Verbs, and Other Hierophanies
I announced my arrival with a leaf of noise.
It was dark and the cars were waiting at the traffic light
Plotting their engines
Mihaela Cristescu
Mihaela Cristescu was born in Romania in 1970 and she emigrated in Sydney, Australia in August 2009. She holds a B.Eng. in Power Plants, a B.A. in Literature and a Master in Linguistics. Her literary work was published in five volumes of poetry and prose and could also be found in Australian Magazines such as ZineWest – Western Sydney Writers, Cordite Poetry Review (‘an Australian and international journal of poetry, criticism and research’) and Double Dialogues – Arts Journal (‘a multi-disciplinary journal dealing with modern and contemporary issues pertaining to politics, society and culture’). Cristescu has been Guest Editor of ZineWest for the last five years and Editor of the Romanian-Australian Anthologies of Poetry and Prose: Pounding the Pavement (Vol 1, 2016), On the Wallaby Track, A Journey Across Memories (Vol 2, 2017), Romanian/Australia Perspectives Between Dusk and Dawn (Vol 3, 2018) and Romanian/Australian Arguments Avant La Lettre (Vol 4, 2019).
The Thrift Store Boy
I believed my troubles had come to an end on the day I was accepted into James Ruse Agricultural High School.
Linda Atkins
Linda Atkins is a medical practitioner and writer, living in Dharug country. She has been published in ABR, Inside Story, Persephone and Grieve 2024 among others. Atkins has been shortlisted in the Olga Masters Short Story Award and the Ernestine Hill Memorial Short Story Awards.
Can an ‘Acting Out’ Teenager’s Behaviour be Resolved in a Hundred and Ten Minutes
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.…
Michael Farrell
Michael Farrell grew up in Bombala, NSW and now lives in Melbourne. He has published several books of poetry as well as chapbooks, most recently I Love Poetry (Giramondo). His previous Giramondo title, Cocky’s Joy (shortlisted for the Prime Minister’s Award for Poetry in 2016), is his first book available on iTunes. He co-edited an anthology of Australian gay and lesbian poets, Out of the Box, with Jill Jones (Puncher & Wattmann 2009). His scholarly book, Writing Australian Unsettlement: Modes of Poetic Invention 1796-1945 (Palgrave Macmillan), theorises a new approach to the history of colonial poetics. He wrote the lyrics for the Dick Diver song ‘Waste the Alphabet’, and edits the small poetry magazine Flash Cove (flashcovemag@gmail.com).