Welcome to the Readers' Choice voting page for the RUSSH Literary Showcase 2026.
Of the hundreds of entries we received, our judges – Elfy Scott, Jessie Tu, Nakkiah Lui and Jess Blanch – shortlisted these 20 finalists.
The written work that receives the most votes here will be crowned our Readers' Choice winner, and will be featured in our May 2026 issue of RUSSH in addition to other prizes.
Voting closes at midnight on 14 April. You can head to our FAQs page for more on our Literary Showcase 2026.
The Long Way To Her
Alev Altanhan
@feverandfig
About
Alev Altanhan is a writer and storyteller exploring identity, desire, and the nuances of contemporary family life. Her work blends narrative and personal reflection, often examining the intersections of queerness, motherhood, and selfhood. Her writing has appeared in literary journals and online platforms.
The Water Child
Alexandra Lawton
@alexandralawtonofficial
About
Alexandra Lawton is a twenty-five year old writer based in Sydney. She has spent the last three years living in the UK where she immersed herself in the world of the literary giants — the Brontë sisters, Jane Austen, William Shakespeare, all of whom have laid the solid foundation for her writing and storytelling to grow and flourish. She loves writing prose, poetry and short fiction, and one day aspires to write a novel, folding in themes of domestic noir, the supernatural and the female psyche.
The Fridge
Angela Edward
About
Angela Edward is a Chinese-born, New Zealand-raised writer based in Sydney. Her work focuses on migration, memory and the private negotiations inside relationships. She is currently at work on a long-form memoir.
Street Cat
Charli Burrowes
@charli.burrowes
About
With a sincere love for storytelling that has taken her from pedalling her bicycle to her local video store in the Australian outback, to sharing stories on a global stage, Charli is a heartbreakingly honest artist, writer, and filmmaker known for her striking vulnerability, signature slick wit, and insightful commentary on art, love, and authenticity in the digital age. Her writing has rattled the outer corners of the internet, clocking millions of impressions and hundreds of thousands of re-shares and views.
Beyond her writing, Charli has spent over a decade honing her skills in storytelling and creative direction, ideating and executing large-scale creative projects. Her work spans short films and music videos, live shows, events, advertising campaigns, and art installations. She has collaborated with globally recognised brands, including Prada, Hermès, Uniqlo, Universal Music, Warner Music, Converse, David Jones, and Westfield, showcasing her ability to craft compelling stories for some of the world’s most iconic names.
Elegy
Emma Dallamora
@emilio_breastevez
About
Emma is a writer from Melbourne. Working in the back end of arts organisations for ages, she now researches in digital ethics and writes about the effects of tech on human traits such as love, creativity, and violence, which is a bit more interesting to her than how much AI can improve productivity.
Commute
Faiza Bokhari
@faizabok
About
Faiza Bokhari is a Pakistani-Australian writer whose work has appeared in places like Portside Review, Roi Fainéant Press, Djed Press, Burnt Roti Magazine, and The Indian Review. She was shortlisted for the 2025 RUSSH Magazine Literary Showcase and the 2018 and 2023 Stuart Hadow Short Story Prize. She is a recipient of the Centre for Stories Early Career Fellowship and is currently working on a collection of short stories.
Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, Oi, Oi, Oi, Aue
Fale Tumanu
@Fale_tumanu
About
Fale Tumanu is a Samoan writer, storyteller, and emerging artist whose practice is grounded in the expression and representation of voice through writing, poetry, and performance. Her work is deeply informed by lived experience, cultural memory and preservation.
Through her creative practice, Fale centres Pacific narratives, amplifying these voices that are often marginalised. Fale’s artistic approach is layered— blending spoken word, theatrical storytelling, and poetic form to create intimate and powerful performances that invite reflection.
Her recent and notable works include participation in an emerging artist residency with Shopfront Arts Co-op, where she further developed her performance practice. She has also performed her one-woman show interstate at the Kingston Butter Factory Theatre in Logan City, Brisbane, marking a significant milestone in her artistic journey. In addition to performance, her poetry has been published in the Tagata Moana Writers’ publication, contributing to a growing body of contemporary Pacific literature.
On Selfhood
Hala Nuri Salem Alrzeghi
@monastery.pdf
About
Hala Salem is a writer with an extensive practice, specialising in fiction, creative non-fiction and cultural criticism. Born and raised in Libya, Hala moved to Dharawal country at the age of eight, and this is where she currently resides. Hala studies Creative Writing and Philosophy at the University of Wollongong. Her writing is inspired by the experience of growing up in two vastly different cultures and often sits on the border of extremes seeking to integrate opposing views. Hala believes in the transformative power of writing through its interrogation and recognition of the world and of human nature.
Skin Hunger
Kathy Parker
@kathyparkerwriter
About
Kathy Parker is a writer, poet and spoken word performer based in South Australia.
Her work has been published in The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, SA Life Magazine, HuffPost and Mamamia, as well as The Faber Writing Academy Anthology (2022-2023), Jacaranda Journal, The Blue Nib, Anti-Heroin Chic and Her Beauty and Her Terror: The Australian Country Women’s Anthology. She is currently completing a Master's of Creative Writing at Edith Cowan University.
For Mother I Will
Lieu Chi Nguyen
@lieuchinguyen.writes
About
Lieu Chi Nguyen is a doctor-writer, Media and Communications PhD candidate and since 2017, a core member of Sweatshop Literacy Movement, having been mentored by Dr Michael Mohammed Ahmad and Winnie Dunn. Her short fiction and non-fiction have been published in SBS Voices, Kill Your Darlings and anthologies including This Little Red Thing (Sweatshop 2019), Sweatshop Women (Sweatshop 2019 and 2020), Heroines: An Anthology of Short Fiction and Poetry: Volume 3 (Neo Perennial Press 2020) and Love (Sweatshop 2025). In 2020, she was shortlisted for the Heroines Women’s Writing Prize.
The Confessions of a Samoan Woman with Obligations
Maryanne Selina Peniamina
@mezselina
About
Maryanne Peniamina is 23 and living in Melbourne, but originally from New Zealand.
Lotus Lips
Maxwell Ko Han
@macswell
About
M. K. Han is a lover and aspiring writer of literature. He is also a student of English and Latin.
For Things Unseen
Munira Tabassum Ahmed
@munira.com.au
About
Munira Tabassum Ahmed’s work has been published in Best of Australian Poems, Pleiades, The Adroit Journal, Meanjin, Liminal, Cordite, and elsewhere. She was the 2022 Kat Muscat Fellow. Her debut novel, 'The Clinging Thing' is forthcoming with Penguin Random House Australia in June 2026.
Livestreaming GOATed The Video Star
Paris Rosemont
@msparisrose
About
Paris Rosemont is a multi-disciplinary, multi-award-winning Thai Australian writer and author of poetry collections Banana Girl (2023) and Barefoot Poetess (2025). Her books have been shortlisted for awards in Australia, Greece, UK and USA, with the latter awarded Distinguished Favorite in the NYC Big Book Award 2025.
Widely published in a plethora of literary journals and anthologies including Australian Poetry Journal, Splinter, and Sky Island Journal, Paris was named the winner of the Matthew Rocca Poetry Prize 2025 and received nominations for the Best of the Net 2025 and Pushcart Prize 2026.
She is a critic for Mascara Literary Journal, Guest Editor for groundbreaking Australian publication Written Off Literary Journal, and sits on the Hunter Writers’ Centre Board. She was also a judge for the Western Australian Premier’s Book Awards 2025.
Paris’s chapbook >>glitch<< will be released in 2026 through queer indie publishing house Incision Press. She is currently working on her debut novel Bruised Fruit, exploring diaspora, desire, and cultural inheritance.
The Film That Ended My Relationship
Paris Tsoukatos
@ptsoukatos
About
Paris Tsoukatos is an aspiring writer and clinical psychology postgraduate based in Australia. She enjoys writing about her life, film, music, and food.
Dido
Selina Decarlo
@selinarosed
About
Selina Decarlo is an Asian student raised in Sydney, Australia. An artist and writer at heart, she has won the 2023 BR4R Seeking Asylum Poetry Prize, placed as a top 10 finalist in the Young Authors Writing Competition for Columbia University, was featured in the No Tokens Journal Issue 11 as editor’s choice, and more.
Al Bint La 3inda Makan
Shayla Zreika
@the.cedardispatch // @shayzreika
About
Shayla Zreika is a Lebanese-Australian student, writer and community-worker based on Gadigal Land {Sydney, AUS}. Growing up as a second-generation immigrant, topics of culture, history and politics naturally infiltrate the common themes of her writing. She is immensely fascinated with nuanced experiences of the cultural diaspora, particularly in the context of literacy and academia. When she is not working on her independent literary magazine, The Cedar Dispatch, she is tending to her Letterboxd diary, going out with her family or digital gardening a new niche interest.
Depression As A Symptom
Svetlana Sterlin
@svetlanasterlin
About
Svetlana Sterlin is the author of Helen Anne Bell Poetry Bequest Award winning collection, If Movement Was a Language (Vagabond Press). Based in Meanjin, Svetlana writes poetry, prose, and the occasional screenplay. Her work appears in Australian Poetry, Cordite, Island, Westerly, and has been recognised in the QLD Literary Awards, Gwen Harwood Poetry Prize, State Library of QLD Young Writers Award, and others. Svetlana is also the founding editor of swim meet lit mag.
We Are Made Of Song
Taneshia Atkinson
@tan3shia
About
Taneshia Atkinson is a Yorta Yorta and Bangerang writer, mother and emerging poet based on Bundjalung Country. She has been published in Peppermint Magazine, Broadsheet, West Space Offsite and UQP's Words To Sing The World Alive anthology, among others.
Untitled
Willow Berry
@_willowberry
About
Willow Berry grew up in a small town in NSW called Bellingen. A lover of nature as well as storytelling, she loves to bring the two together to enjoy the essence of life and uncover the most about human stories, the bold, quiet and beautiful.
Only one vote per person will be counted.
For more information on timelines, head to our entry and info page.
This project has been made possible by CHANEL.
