At Glenfern mansion, 2019

DR MYKAELA SAUNDERS is a Koori/Goori and Lebanese writer, researcher, editor and teacher.

Mykaela is the author of the speculative fiction collection ALWAYS WILL BE (UQP 2024), which won the David Unaipon Award, and the editor of THIS ALL COME BACK NOW, the Aurealis Award-winning, world first anthology of blackfella spec fic (UQP 2022). Mykaela has won other prizes for fiction, poetry, life writing and research, including the Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize and the Oodgeroo Noonuccal Indigenous Poetry Prize. Her writing has been widely published across forms, genres and disciplines, and all of her major creative projects have attracted funding and fellowships.

Mykaela is a postdoctoral research fellow at Macquarie University. Her project is LAYING DOWN THE LORE: a survey of First Nations speculative, visionary and imaginative fiction. Mykaela has worked in Aboriginal education in various capacities since 2003, and taught at the tertiary level since 2012. Her research explores her community’s past, present and future.

Of Dharug descent and belonging to the Tweed Goori community, Mykaela lives and works with gratitude on the lands of the Dharug, Kulin, and Bundjalung nations – Sydney, Melbourne, and the northern rivers of NSW.

Awards –

© Mykaela Saunders, 2024