Writing bodies & places with Delia Falconer, Holly O'Neil, Georgina Reid, and Dave Drayton
About the session
In this session, a cohort of UTS creative practitioners including acclaimed author Delia Falconer, poet and writer Dave Drayton, interdisciplinary storyteller and researcher Holly O'Neil, and writer, designer and landscape researcher Georgina Reid, will perform live readings of recent creative nonfiction writing to spark a critical look at the language we use to describe complex and entangled systems.
The readings will be followed by a creative writing exercise and impromptu readings.
About the public program
Bodies of water is a free learning program presented in parallel with the UTS Gallery exhibition A river runs through (5 May – 29 August 2026) by Spence Messih.
Time & Locations
- 5:00 pm - 5:30 pm
Live readings
UTS Gallery, CB06.04.358, (Building 6, Level 4, 702 Harris St, Ultimo)
- 5:30 pm - 6:00 pm
Creative writing exercise (optional)
The Abercrombie Hotel (Level 2/100 Broadway, Chippendale)
About the Presenters
Delia Falconer
Delia Falconer is a writer, cultural historian and Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at UTS. She is the author of two novels, 'The Service of Clouds' (1997) and 'The Lost Thoughts of Soldiers' (2005) and two works of nonfiction, 'Sydney' (2010) and 'Signs and Wonders: Dispatches from a Time of Beauty and Loss' (2021), which were shortlisted for national and international awards across the categories of fiction, nonfiction, innovation, biography, history and research and each awarded the National Nib Literary Award. She won a Walkley Award for Art Criticism in 2018 for work exploring the ways that contemporary writers have responded to species loss. Falconer is passionate about using creative nonfiction as a tool to engage with the climate crisis.
Holly O'Neil
Holly O'Neil is an English, Bahrain-born, Australia-based Multimodal Researcher and Anthro-Artist. Professionally trained as both a reportage illustrator and an anthropologist, she now works to combine her two disciplines in experimental, multimodal, and informative ways. Currently, she is exploring the role of multimodal methodology and storytelling to document and engage the public with the climate crisis. She is currently working on her PhD at UTS, where she is working on an Australian Research Council-funded project to "surface" the urban wetlands that Sydney is built on through design and research.
Georgina Reid
Georgina Reid is a writer, designer and landscape thinker whose work roams between landscape architecture and creative non-fiction, environmental philosophy and field practices. She is the founding publication editor of 'Wonderground' (2020–25) and 'The Planthunter' (2013–2020), and the author of 'The Planthunter: Truth, Beauty, Chaos and Plants' (Thames and Hudson, 2018). Her essays, poems and editorial work are published nationally and internationally. Reid is currently undertaking a PhD in Landscape Architecture at UTS, where she also teaches. Her research explores creative non-fiction writing as expressive, ethical design practice — asking what it means to write with, not about, the complexity and liveliness of the river landscape of Dyarubbin, Darug Country.
Dave Drayton
Dave Drayton is a writer of poetry, creative nonfiction and fiction, and a Lecturer in Writing at UTS. His work includes 'P(oe)Ms' (Rabbit Poetry Journal, 2017); 'British P(oe)Ms' (Beir Bua Press, 2022); and the novella 'E, UIO, A' (Container, 2018). Drayton is interested in the creative use of structural restrictions to push the boundaries of language, and has appeared at the Newcastle Writers' Festival, National Young Writers' Festival, Perth Poetry Festival, and has given papers at the Australian Association of Writing Programs and International Association for Literary Journalism Studies. His writing has appeared in Meanjin, The Sydney Review of Books, The Lifted Brow, Australian Poetry Journal, and other publications.
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