Rachel Watts

Summary

Rachel Watts is an author of speculative and literary fiction, a tutor and workshop facilitator. Her short work has been published in Westerly Magazine, Island, Kill Your Darlings, The Big Issue and more.

Biography

Rachel Watts is an award-winning former journalist and writer of literary and speculative fiction. Her writing tends to focus on difficult futures and end times, both personal and global. She is particularly interested in expressing women's experience of loss and belonging. Her literary novel manuscript The Light of the Mind was longlisted for the 2018 Richell Prize and shortlisted for the 2020 Penguin Literary Prize under its new title In The Morning I Rise. Her young adult climate change novella Survival was a finalist in the 2018 Wishing Shelf Book Awards. She has a Master's Degree in Creative Practice and facilitates creative writing workshops for adults and teenagers.

Relevant qualifications

Master's Degree in Creative Practice (Curtin University, 2017)
Graduate Diploma in Journalism (Curtin University, 2005)
B.A (Hons) Political Science (University of Western Australia, 2001)

Recent experience

2019: The Right Words: Editing and Polishing Your Draft, Rockingham Writers Convention workshop (Perth); What If?: Creative Writing Thought Experiments, #Litfest2444 Young Storytellers Festival workshop (Port Macquarie); Writing the Anthropocene, Emerging Writers Festival panel (Melbourne).

2018: Creative Writing Workshop series, Just Add Passion Emporium, August - December (Perth); Writers Write: creative practice and ritual, Ruth Faulkner Library workshop (Perth); Creative Writing for ATAR, Victoria Park Centre for the Arts (Perth), Go with the Heart, #Litfest2444 Young Storytellers Festival (Port Macquarie).

2017: Characters in Conflict, Ruth Faulkner Library (Perth).