Every year, new voices emerge in Australian literature — voices that surprise us, provoke us, and invite us to see the world differently. They might arrive in essays, novels, or plays, each carrying a perspective shaped by experience, curiosity, and imagination.

In 2026, bringing attention to these voices feels more important than ever. That's why RUSSH's Literary Showcase has returned, celebrating the writers shaping contemporary storytelling and those yet to be discovered.

This year’s judges – playwright and author Nakkiah Lui, journalist and author Elfy Scott, and writer and cultural critic Jessie Tu – bring distinct perspectives to their craft. Spanning theatre, investigative journalism, fiction, and cultural commentary, their work interrogates power, identity, and the systems that shape our lives, while keeping the intimacy at the heart of writing firmly in focus.

Ahead of announcing this year’s Literary Showcase winners, we spoke with the trio about writing across forms, the realities of the Australian publishing industry, and the stories that feel most urgent right now. From the politics embedded in every narrative to the power of every individual voice, their insights offer a reminder that the power of writing both reflects and changes the world around us.

Nakkiah Lui

Your work spans theatre, television and literature. How does writing for the stage differ from writing for print?

In many ways it’s similar, but it’s also an entirely different beast. A lot of writing isn’t actually writing. For me, a huge part of the process is research and dramaturgy, and following instinct. The most important thing is finding the thesis. For me that’s usually a question. If I can’t find the question, I’m lost. Everything starts with a question for me - it’s the thing that keeps pulling me back to the work.

Writing for any medium requires a lot of curiosity about the world. I love that a fundamental part of my job is asking questions and letting myself get curious. I research a lot, take a lot of notes, and I like bouncing ideas around with people. Half the job is just going down rabbit holes and following the thing that makes you go “wait… what?”

The technique of writing for performance is different though, whether it’s screen or stage. With theatre, I love that action is dialogue and consequence. Everything unfolds in real time. There’s nowhere to hide in theatre. It’s just people in a room and the tension between them. Screen writing is more about creating a world on the page and driving the audience through it with questions: what’s going to happen, what does this mean, where is this going? You’re building an engine that pulls the audience through the story.

For print, both when I write and when I read, what I love is the feeling of sitting with a voice that feels like someone speaking directly into your ear and only yours.

Ultimately all of them live on with the audience, and in some ways the story that exists for them becomes a slightly different one to the story you first told. Once it leaves you, it belongs to them. That’s the strange and beautiful part of it.

What responsibility — if any — do writers have to challenge dominant narratives?

I wouldn’t say it’s a responsibility, as if writers can simply decide whether or not to engage with the world. The idea that art can opt out of politics is a bit of a myth. Our lived experiences are political whether we intend them to be or not, so the work inevitably carries that with it.

I love this quote from James Baldwin: “Artists are here to disturb the peace."

I think great art isn’t self-referential; it’s self-risking. Without tension, without friction, without the world pushing back, there are no stakes. Art needs resistance. For me, that’s the difference between a good writer and a great one. It’s not about how perfect the prose is. It’s about having a point of view with edges and teeth. A point of view you can feel. Something that wants to be understood and is also trying to understand.

Art is important because it’s about us: who we are and how we understand each other, how we feel, and sometimes how we argue with each other. At its best it makes us see something differently... or recognise something about ourselves we didn’t want to look at. Good art doesn’t just reflect the world. It collides with it.

Indigenous storytelling has reshaped Australian cultural life. Where do you see it heading next?

For a long time there was this expectation that our stories had to sit in a very narrow lane, we had to explain ourselves, justify ourselves, and educate people. That’s shifting.

What excites me now is the breadth and the permission to be expansive. Indigenous storytellers are working across every genre - comedy, horror, romance, political thrillers, children’s stories. We’re seeing writers and artists tell stories that are messy, funny, dangerous, strange. I’d love to see our stories recognised for their cultural worth globally - stories and voices that travel and are exported, not treated as niche or local.

I think it’s particularly important now, especially when challenging values and power structures, that people find resistance through story. Story is how communities hold onto care, memory and each other when the world feels unstable. Indigenous communities know this deeply. We are proof that people can survive apocalypses and that humanity, care and imagination can endure through them.

For me, the next step of Indigenous storytelling is sovereignty of imagination. Not just surviving history but shaping the future of the stories we tell and the worlds we imagine.

What advice would you give to First Nations writers entering predominantly white publishing spaces?

Don’t let those spaces convince you that your work has to become smaller or more palatable to survive them. Predominantly white publishing spaces often present themselves as neutral, but they’re shaped by particular histories, tastes and power structures. Recognising that is important. You’re not the one who’s out of place. You are entering a system that was not built with you in mind.

There can also be pressure to perform a certain kind of “authenticity” or to only tell stories that fit what people expect from Indigenous writers. But identity isn’t the art. It’s the starting point. The work is what you do with it and the kinds of stories you allow yourself to imagine beyond those expectations.

I’d also say protect your instincts. Being visible in this industry doesn’t always mean being safe and success can sometimes mean being consumed just as quickly.

If the work feels a little dangerous, like it might unsettle something, you’re probably close to something worth writing. So don’t let anyone tell you not to bite just because your teeth are sharp. If your writing has bite, let it bite.

Comedy is often central to your work. What can humour achieve that other forms of storytelling can’t?

Everyone likes a laugh. And if they don’t, that’s probably their problem. Humour gets past people’s defences in a way other forms sometimes can’t. When people laugh they’re open. That’s a great place to be as a storyteller because you can slip in uncomfortable truths that might usually get rejected. A joke can cut deeper than an argument.

Comedy exposes. It punctures hypocrisy, power and absurdity immediately. It can take the power out of something that’s trying to intimidate you. As a First Nations person, humour has always been tied to survival too. It's how we deal with pain, contradiction and history. You can hold anger and joy in the same breath.

Laughter is dangerous in the best way.

What was the last book that you read that truly moved you?

Flesh really stopped me in my tracks. It follows a young man drifting through life in Europe who ends up orbiting wealth and power he doesn’t fully understand. There’s no moral comfort in it. You’re left to just sit with the mess. It’s such a compelling and suspenseful portrait of passivity and numbness.

Sky Daddy is completely different. It’s about a woman who develops an obsessive romantic and sexual fixation on airplanes. It’s strange, funny and unsettling in a way I really enjoy. And never once does it make fun of its characters. Its compassion is charming.

They’re very different books, but both explore how power quietly shapes people’s lives. In that sense, the personal is political. They’re not sweeping stories, but they pull you in emotionally because their specificity feels so universal.

And I sobbed during Sunrise on the Reaping. I'm a big Hunger Games fan.

Elfy Scott

What are you reading right now?

I'm reading a lot of different narrative non-fiction so far this year as research for the book I'm currently writing. I get a lot of momentum from seeing how other writers have approached true stories. I just finished The Premonitions Bureau by Sam Knight, which was a fun, easy read focused on a psychiatrist's obsession with trying to collect people with supposed precognition in the 60s.

You’re currently researching your second book. What has that process been like? How has it differed from your first?

This book has been a totally different experience from the first. My first book, which focused on the experiences and challenges faced by people living with complex mental health conditions in Australia, was mostly written in a COVID lockdown, so I was extremely limited in the types of interviews I could conduct and the way the book could be constructed. With this book, I had the great privilege of getting a literary travel grant from Writers Victoria, which gave me the opportunity to travel to other countries and cities and meet people face-to-face. That has given me a lot more freedom with the writing, as well as experiential information that I wouldn't have had access to otherwise.

Your writing often interrogates power, silence and systems. What kinds of stories feel most urgent to you in Australia right now?

There are simply too many to name and fantastic journalists around the country investigating a number of them. Right now, I feel very focused on the macro picture of generational inequality. It's the focus of my next book, so I feel mired in these topics but massive wealth inequality, the cost of housing, and the world younger generations are set to inherit really keeps me up at night -- I think a lot of people feel the same way.

You’ve spoken about the confidence required to “take up space” as a writer. How do you navigate that tension between doubt and authority in your work?

It's a tricky question and it's something I feel complicated about in my life as a presenter as well -- whose voices deserve to be heard and why are some privileged above others? I think the only way I ever come to peace with this question is by researching as much as possible, informing myself rigorously and platforming other people's stories whenever and wherever I can.

When you’re reading something, what makes you pay attention? Is it voice, structure, risk — or something harder to define?

A combination of all of the above but strangely these days I think structure may be the factor I'm most drawn to. Every story and voice is interesting to me given an unexpected structure.

What do you think are the biggest challenges for aspiring writers right now?

I think the cost of living crisis has been brutal for Australian artists and creatives in general. I know I feel it, even though I subsidise my writing work with my journalism work, it's incredibly difficult to pay rent or the mortgage as well as prioritise creative pursuits. The book that I'm currently writing would have been completed in approximately a quarter of the time if I had the funds to make that happen. I hope Australia reckons with this issue at large and those who can afford to see the value in paying for the writing and arts that they consume.

Jessie Tu

As someone working at the intersection of media, feminism and cultural commentary, what kinds of voices do you think are still missing from Australian publishing?

The internet has obviously democratised the platforming of voices, so in some sense, no one goes 'missing'. If you seek it, there'll be a voice out there that speaks to your experience, that holds your worldviews. That said, there's still the unfortunate model called capitalism which means that at the end of the day, some voices will be elevated at the expense of others. After all, we only have a finite amount of time on earth and everyone is limited to 24 hours a day. We can't control what others read, but we can control what we read, and we can decide on whose voices we pay attention to.

You’re both a novelist and a journalist. How does moving between those forms influence you as a writer?

I wish I knew how to answer this eloquently. I think sometimes I find it hard to find my narrative fiction writing voice when I've been writing journalistic article after article. Reading a wide range of fiction and non-fiction helps pull me out of any sort of singular voice, I think.

What do you think Australian writers do particularly well — and where do we hold ourselves back?

I think we have really evocative nature writers. And we have extraordinary non-fiction writers and memoirists like Alexander Collier and Isabelle Odenberg and Anita Heiss and Helen Garner. We're also extraordinary poets, like Sarah Holland Batt and Ali Cobby Eckermann and Evelyn Araluen. We have brilliant publishing houses, led by really courageous publishers, who put their hearts into works that would otherwise get overshadowed by conventional page-turners. I'm especially fond of Yumna Kassab's writing, and Tiffany Tsao's work as a translator.

How important is political and social consciousness in contemporary storytelling?

It's everything. Even when you're writing about families, or children, or friendship groups disintegrating, you are writing about politics and social standards.

What’s a common misconception about working in publishing or media that you wish aspiring writers understood?

I think most people know this, but you really will never be able to afford that terrace in Newtown on a writer's salary.

What is the one book you love to give as a gift?

Far From the Tree, by Andrew Solomon. It may seem like a very sad read, (it's about the parents of children with disabilities, among other atypical differences) but it's the most comprehensive and awe-inspiring guidebook to...life, and love. I think it single-handedly taught me what true love looks like, and it also calibrated my thoughts about love, family and what that looks like. I read it in my early twenties and it was a very formative experience.