Second time’s a charm as Mykaela Saunders wins the 2026 Peter Blazey Fellowship for ‘Dear Uncle’
November 2025: Announcing the winner of the $20,000 Peter Blazey Fellowship for 2026, Mykaela Saunders, for a work in progress about her uncle, working-class Koori poet Kev Saunders.
A Koori and Lebanese writer belonging to the Tweed Goori community, Dr Mykaela Saunders has won numerous prizes including the David Unaipon Award, ABR Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize, the Oodgeroo Noonuccal Indigenous Poetry Prize, and the Rosemary van den Berg Prize for First Nations Criticism.
Her uncle Kevin Saunders (1956-2012) was a proud Dharug man who lived with significant mental health and addiction issues stemming from childhood abuse, poverty, incarceration and losing his first daughter to SIDs.
In ‘Dear Uncle’, Saunders responds to poems her uncle published between 1997–99 with a letters and poetry of her own, reflecting on his writing and her memories, their relationship, family stories, community and national history.
‘Dear Uncle’ had previously been a finalist for the Peter Blazey Fellowship in 2022. The 2026 judging panel members were unanimous in recognising the singular quality of Saunders’ uncompromising, cut-through authorial voice and vision.
‘Saunders’ sentences startle and galvanise,’ the panel wrote. ‘Her work expands the possibilities of life writing in the way it speaks about race, colonialism, family, writing, grief and love.’
In accepting the Peter Blazey Fellowship, Saunders said: “Bugalbeh (thank you)! Like Peter Blazey, my Uncle Kevin Saunders lived a full and fast life, not an easy one. Uncle Kev was a proud Dharug man who was so, so funny, creative and philosophical, and cared for many humans and other animals throughout his life.
“A working-class Koori, he also lived with some significant struggles. He died too young, of lung cancer, aged 55. It must have taken great courage for my Uncle to put his poetry out there in the world.
“Writing my own letters and poems in response to his demands deep emotional presence; it takes time and heart to sit with my Uncle’s work, thinking and feeling about what he is saying through them, and writing back to him with love and integrity in a way that respects the living and the dead.
“It’s not writing I can do in short bursts of stolen time.
“Thanks to the Peter Blazey Fellowship I don’t have to choose between my work and creative practice, as I’ve had to so many times – and as my Uncle had to too. Now I have the chance to turn this project into a book that will do my Uncle justice”.
The Peter Blazey Fellowship congratulates 2026 recipient Mykaela Saunders, with special commendations to writers Joel Stephen Birnie, Jack Latimore and Kate Lilley for their entries.
The Fellowship would like to thank Chair and committee members Professor Jessica Gerrard, Associate Professor Maria Tumarkin, Dr Quinn Eades, Leah Jing McIntosh and Clare Forster, with committee support from Stace Sakellaropoulos.
Jol Blazey and 2026 Peter Blazey Fellowship recipient Mykaela Saunders
2026 Peter Blazey Fellowship recipient Mykaela Saunders (right) with 2026 Fellowship panel member Clare Forster and Jol Blazey. Credit: Bernard Wright
Books supported by the Peter Blazey Fellowship
2004 Sara Hardy The Unusual Life of Edna Walling
2006 Robert Kenny The Lamb Enters the Dreaming: Nathanael Pepper and the Ruptured World
2007 Judith Pugh Unstill Life: Art, politics and living with Clifton Pugh
2008 Dmetri Kakmi Mother Land
2009 Maggie MacKellar When It Rains: A Memoir
2010 Lily Chan Toyo
2011 Robyn Davidson Unfinished Woman
2012 Helen Ennis Olive Cotton: A life in photography
2013 Kim Mahood Position Doubtful: Mapping Landscape and Memories
2014 Mark Mordue Boy On Fire: The Young Nick Cave
2015 Rebe Taylor Into the Heart of Tasmania: A Search For Human Antiquity
2016 Julia Leigh Avalanche
2017 Eleanor Hogan Into the Loneliness: The Unholy Alliance of Ernestine Hill and Daisy Bates
2018 Cassandra Pybus Truganini: Journey Through the Apocalypse
2019 Sanaz Fotouhi Love Marriage in Kabul: A Memoir
2020 Ellen van Neerven Personal Score: Sport, Culture, Identity
Recent Fellowship recipients: Declan Fry, Dženana Vucic, SJ Norman, Fiona Murphy, Ju Bavyka
Peter Blazey Fellowship 