Capital Letters

Capital Letters is a new bimonthly reading night on Ngunnawal and Ngambri Country, held at the Drill Hall Gallery at the Australian National University. It features programmed writers and has two open mic slots.

Created by local editor Alice Grundy and local writer Jacinta Mulders, Capital Letters is a night for for experimenting, connecting and for showcasing new creative work. Canberra
is often used as a synonym for Australia’s political class, but locals know that there is a diverse population that includes artists and writers, students and academics. Intended to foster
community and celebrate writing, Capital Letters invites you to come and enjoy the varied talents of local writers.

The first event will feature local and interstate authors who write in a range of genres including Zhi Cham, Patrick Mullins, Lucy Neave, Zoya Patel and Jane Rawson.

Alice Grundy has worked in Australian trade publishing for fifteen years and is currently completing a PhD at ANU on editing history. Her writing has appeared in a range of publications including Sydney Review of Books, The Conversation and Australian Literary Studies and her first minigraph was released this year by Cambridge University Press.

Jacinta Mulders is a writer based on Ngunnawal and Ngambri Country. Her writing has been published in The Stinging Fly, The Believer, Meanjin, Griffith Review and elsewhere. In 2022 she was commended in The Stinging Fly and was also the recipient of artsACT funding for her short story collection in development. She has a MA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia, granted under full scholarship. She is a current Visiting Fellow at ANU School of Literature, Languages and Linguistics.

November Readers

Zhi Cham (he/they) is an experimental poet/artist based on unceded Ngunnawal, Ngunawal, Ngambri country. They are the author of the award-winning collection of poetry, blur by the; and is one
half of the experimental poetry/sound duo known as 莎瑜 (ShaYu). Currently, Zhi is developing a digital practice which stems from his love of Microsoft Excel. They love lo-fi stuff, emotional maximilism and not being perceived.

Patrick Mullins is a Canberra-based writer and academic who has a PhD from the University of Canberra. Tiberius with a Telephone, his first book, won the 2020 NSW Premier’s Non-Fiction
Award and the 2020 National Biography Award. He is also the author of The Trials of Portnoy: how Penguin brought down Australia’s censorship system, and, with Matthew Ricketson, Who
Needs the ABC?.

Lucy Neave completed a Masters of Fine Arts in Writing in the US on a Fulbright scholarship, and has received a Varuna New Writers’ Fellowship and Australian Society of Authors Mentorship. Her
fiction has appeared in Australian and American literary journals, including Southerly, Overland and Lost Magazine, and in Best Australian Stories 2009. She teaches Creative Writing at the
Australian National University.

Zoya Patel is the author of No Country Woman, a memoir of race, religion and feminism. She is co-host of the Guardian’s Book It In podcast, and the Margin Notes podcast alongside Yen
Eriksen. Zoya is a columnist for the RiotACT, and regular books critic and writer for The Guardian, Canberra Times, SBS Voices, Refinery29 and more. Zoya has won numerous awards for her
writing and editing, and she was a 2020 judge for the Stella Prize and Chair of the 2021 Stella Prize Judging Panel.

Jane Rawson grew up in Canberra and travelled via San Francisco and Melbourne to Tasmania, where she works as a writer for a conservation organisation. Her first novel, A Wrong turn at the Office of Unmade Lists, won the Small Press Network’s Most Underrated Book Award and her second novel, From the Wreck, won the Aurealis Award and was longlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award. She is also the author of a non-fiction guide to surviving and living with climate change called The Handbook. Her latest novel is A History of Dreams.

For more information contact Alice Grundy, 0401 845 442
capitallettersCBR@gmail.com | msha.ke/capitalletterscbr