News

Hunter Writers’ Centre is delighted to announce the award winners for the 2026 Grieve Project, a national storytelling initiative that invites the exploration of grief through creative expression. Works submitted span poetry, prose, music, film, multi-media, and the visual arts.

This year’s selected works were curated by Kylie Mirmohamadi and Jodi Vial, with Katarina Lindstrom as Associate Curator.

Hunter Writers’ Centre proudly acknowledges the support of their partners, the National Association of Loss and Grief (NSW) and Pettigrew Family Funerals, their sponsors, and In-Memoriam Donors whose generosity makes the Grieve Project possible. Palliative Care NSW was proud to contribute to this important initiative through sponsorship of the Curator’s Award ($400), awarded to Joanna Woutersz for her work, The Circle is Complete.

On the Grieve project, Trudy Hanson, CEO of NALAG (NSW) says:

The National Association of Loss and Grief (NSW) is the proud foundation partner of The Grieve Project. Each year, we are stunned by quality of expression submitted. We wish we could give everyone all who enters this project something for their courage and generosity in sharing their work. I encourage people to look through the online gallery and the Grieve anthology where you will find a profound expression of the fundamental qualities of being human. Nothing can move us quite so deeply as music, story and art.

This year, with the generous support of Pettigrew Family Funerals, the Grieve anthology opens with a commissioned piece by a First Nations author, Julie Janson, a Burruberongal woman of the Darug Aboriginal nation, NSW. The story is based on her Indigenous family history of children given up to the Benevolent Society in the 1860s.

Amy-Lea Pettigrew, whose sponsorship enabled the commission, says:

Pettigrew Family Funerals is honoured to support the Grieve anthology’s first commissioned work by a First Nations author. First Nations people are this country’s first storytellers, and it feels right that the anthology begins with their voice. Julie Janson’s story carries a history that deserves to be heard.

Grieve Volume 13 is due for release on Tuesday 29 September, and can be preordered here: https://hunterwriterscentre.org/bookshop/

The full list of 2026 award winners is available at https://hunterwriterscentre.org/grieve-2026/

The online gallery is now open to view the selected multi-media works, with the Grieve anthology soon to be released. Available at https://hunterwriterscentre.org/grieve-2026-online-gallery/