Announcing the new Parramatta Laureate in Literature
The Sydney Review of Books and the Writing and Society Research Centre at Western Sydney University are delighted to announce Eda Gunaydin as the new Parramatta Laureate in Literature, a program developed in partnership with the City of Parramatta.
Launched in 2024, the Laureate program gives an opportunity to an outstanding and highly regarded writer with links to the region to help animate a vision for the future of Parramatta as it cements its position as the true heart of global Sydney.
Gunaydin is a Turkish-Australian essayist and fiction writer from Western Sydney. She grew up in Blacktown and is deeply invested in enriching the creative life of Parramatta and its communities. Her first essay collection, Root & Branch: Essays on Inheritance, won the 2023 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Non-Fiction. She was the 2025 Copyright Agency – UTS New Writer in Residence, and has been widely published in journals including Meanjin, HEAT, Cordite, and, of course, the Sydney Review of Books. Gunaydin’s advocacy work across Parramatta also includes curating events for Parramatta Lanes and Parramatta Artists’ Studios (PAS), and she has written films and essays about the region for the Museum of Contemporary Art C3West and Powerhouse Parramatta.
As Laureate, Gunaydin will receive a stipend of $50,000 to write a new collection of short stories about futurity, with a focus upon Parramatta’s unique geographies and cultural histories. “I am unspeakably excited to develop a suite of interconnected speculative fiction stories,” she comments, “rooted in place-based research and inspired by Parramatta’s 2050 vision – to explore how this city and its people might evolve through environmental, social and technological change.”
City of Parramatta Lord Mayor, Cr Martin Zaiter, commented: “Parramatta has a unique community tapestry, one that is diverse and rich in heritage and culture that gives our City an authentic voice. This program gives people from Western Sydney the opportunity to thrive in a creative environment. We support talented writers like Eda Gunaydin to help share the stories of our global City in a unique, compelling way.”
Associate Professor Kate Fagan, Director of the WSRC and Chair of the selection panel, commented: “Literary cultures in the Parramatta region are capturing international attention right now. Gunaydin is an outstanding writer whose work channels the most urgent themes of our time, while placing Parramatta at the forefront of those shared global stories.”
“In Gunaydin, we have a Laureate whose creative and critical work is anchored in a powerful civic conscience,” said Dr James Jiang, Editor of the Sydney Review of Books. “Readers can look forward to stories that will bring humour and insight into life in a thriving global city.”
This is the second time the Laureateship has been offered, after a highly successful first run in which Parramatta author Yumna Kassab was appointed to the role. Completed during her tenure, Kassab’s indexical work Parramatta: A Dictionary of Place and Memory will be published in full in 2026 by leading literary press Giramondo. Extracts from the Dictionary can be read here.
For media enquiries, please contact the Western Sydney University Media Team via email (media@westernsydney.edu.au) or phone (0461 393 416).
You can read the full media release here.
Photo credit: Paul Jones