Children’s Storytelling and Literature Fellowship
Do you have a captivating idea that celebrates the art of storytelling for, by and with children? Come play with us!
Storytelling for children is an ancient tradition and can take many forms. Your project could include writing, illustration, music, oral storytelling or a physical experience for children 0–18 years.
You’ll have access to more than 100,000 children’s collection items, including:
- novels
- picture books
- graphic novels
- art and sculpture
- realia
- poetry
- stories.
The fellowship includes:
- $15,000 funding
- desk space at the Library for 12 months
- access to collections and Library staff expertise.
Funding is based on approximately 3 months of work in the Library. This can be either continuous or broken up over the year, and you’ll have access to your office for the full 12 months.
2025 recipients
Joanne Amarisa and Mei Leong – My Summer in the Library: A guided storytelling adventure for children and teens
Joanne Amarisa and Mei Leong will create My Summer in the Library: a ‘choose your own adventure’ storybook which will offer a new way for children and teens to explore State Library Victoria. Joanne and Mei will produce a book of modular worksheets that encourage young visitors to the Library to engage more deeply with the spaces and collections and then write letters to the Library. Participants will learn new storytelling techniques and become active contributors to the Library’s rich history and legacy.
Joanne and Mei are communication designers and creative partners in Data Garden Co – a knowledge collective that runs educational programs to introduce diverse cohorts of young people to data storytelling. Mei and Jo are interested in exploring the role of visual storytelling in promoting agency and data literacy in communities. Together, they regularly host workshops for university students on data visualisation and creative coding.
Previous recipients
Learn more about the inspiring projects undertaken by past and present fellows in our fellows gallery.
- 2024: Anthony and Declan Crowley with the project Doc Provost's Lair of Lies, an interactive digital graphic novel and accompanying resources exploring critical thinking in an age of deepfakes, AI, product placement, algorithmic bias and truth self-selection.
- 2022: Juliet Miranda Rowe with the project All Will Be Revealed, an exploration of the connection between the history of stage magic and the contemporary moving image through the WG Alma Conjuring Collection.
- 2019: Matt Chun with the children's picture book Safe Passage and research into the history of Australian children's books as reflecting, or contributing to, the visual culture or semiotics of settler colonialism and White Australia Policy.
- 2018: Leanne Hall for the YA novel The Celestial about celebrity, politics, race, performance and identity in Melbourne on the eve of WWII, and John Oldmeadow (Honorary) for the article A history of the development of the Dromkeen Collection, referencing the Library's completed listing of the Dromkeen manuscripts collection.
- 2017: Dr Lili Wilkinson for the YA novel The Wild Kindness, which confronted the lost girls trope head-on, restoring agency to the lost girls of literature in a postmodern feminist reclamation.
- 2016: Stephanie Holm with the book manuscript From Curious Creatures to Bushland Beasts: A Graphic Novel Exploring Representations of Australian Fauna and Flora in Early Australian Children's Book Publishing.
- 2015: Lyndal Mebberson for the documentary Onions, Bunions, Corns and Crabs – From the Magic Pudding to Lockie Leonard: Adapting Australian Children's Literature for Stage and Screen.
- 2014: Theresa O'Connor for her project researching the Library's Children's Literature Collection to create a series of paper puppet workshops and a pop-up puppet show.