Relaunched Joyce Thorpe Nicholson Creative Fellowship to create new work inspired by rare books collection

Writer Monique Grbec has been announced as the University of Melbourne's 2025 Joyce Thorpe Nicholson Creative Fellow.

Monique is a neurodiverse writer working across genre and form and their interdisciplinary practice is characterised by personal narrative, research, truth-telling, and experimentation.

The Joyce Thorpe Nicholson Creative Fellowship is an initiative of Archives and Special Collections, one of the largest cultural collections at the University of Melbourne and part of Scholarly Services.

Named in honour of University alumnus Joyce Thorpe Nicholson, the Fellowship is aimed at emerging writers, early career practitioners, and recent graduates, for creative work that responds to the Joyce Thorpe Nicholson Collection, drawing connections and bringing new insights to the material. It was relaunched this year for emerging creative practitioners after a five-year hiatus.

A child of the Stolen Generations, Monique works to restore, reframe, and amplify positive First Nations stories and perspectives. They were a 2024 Sydney Review of Books Emerging Critic Fellow and write for many publications including The Saturday Paper. They won the City of Melbourne Lord Mayor’s Creative Writing Award for First Nations Memoir (2019); and their visual artwork is held in the Koorie Heritage Trust Collection and featured during Yirramboi First Nations Arts Festival.

Inspired by Joyce Thorpe Nicholson’s love of games, Monique’s research as a Fellow into the Collection will inform the creation of a new game, bringing Joyce’s feminist ideas into a contemporary, accessible format appealing to both readers and gamers. Throughout the Fellowship, hands-on workshops will introduce students to the creative process of transforming feminist text and themes into interactive game mechanics and storytelling, allowing them to formulate and test prototypes that foster creative literacy, interdisciplinary skills and an appreciation for research.

"Like Joyce Thorpe Nicholson, I like games, language, and rules. Honouring her remarkable contribution to the Women’s Movement and publishing, I will use the Fellowship to research her collection through a feminist, First Nations lens.” Monique said.