Bundanon

Lives / works: Sydney, Gadigal and Wangal land

Charlotte Wood is the author of six novels and three books of non-ficon. Her latest book is The Luminous Soluon, an exploration of creativity and the inner life. Her last novel was the international bestseller, The Weekend. It was shortlisted for several awards including the Stella Prize and the Prime Minister’s Literary Award, both of which she won, among others, for her previous novel, The Natural Way of Things, in 2016. That title was recently featured in the 2021 ABC Television series, The Books That Made Us. In 2019 Wood was made a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) and named one of the Australian Financial Review’s 100 Women of Influence.

In residence at Bundanon

For her Bundanon residency, Wood aims to complete a second draft of a novel in progress, a ‘diary’ kept by an ambivalent and skeptical member of a contemporary Catholic abbey in an enclosed order of nuns situated in the Monaro region of NSW. As well as solo work on her novel, Wood will spend part of the residency working with her writer colleague Ailsa Piper to develop and test a one-week residential masters retreat/workshop tailored to high-calibre established writers and artists, a group largely ignored in existing professional development programs for creatives.