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Our February member spotlight is Eda Gunaydin, a Turkish-Australian essayist, critic, and short story writer from Western Sydney who was recently named the 2026-27 Parramatta Laureate in Literature.
Eda’s writing explores class, intergenerational trauma, and futurity. She has been published widely in publications including Meanjin, HEAT, Sydney Review of Books, Cordite Poetry Review, and others. Her debut essay collection Root & Branch: Essays on Inheritance (NewSouth Publishing) won the 2023 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Non-Fiction, and was shortlisted for the 2023 Australian Book Industry Awards’ Matt Richell Award for New Writer of the Year. In 2025, Eda was awarded the Copyright Agency – UTS New Writer in Residence fellowship.
Eda is a Lecturer at the University of Wollongong, and lives on Wangal land.
Congratulations on being named as the new Parramatta Laureate in Literature. What does that mean to you? And what can you share about the work you will be producing as part of the program?
It is an honour to have been selected as the Parramatta Laureate in Literature for 2026-27. I have lived the bulk of my creative life in the region of Parramatta, and it has always been an anchor that nourishes and grounds my practice. During my tenure, I will be developing a suite of interconnected speculative fiction stories – rooted in place-based research and inspired by Parramatta’s 2050 vision – to explore how the city and its people might evolve through environmental, social, and technological change.
What inspired you to begin a writing career?
I have always loved writing and words more than anything else. I was a voracious reader as a child, and eventually became someone who kept extensive diaries/journals, partially to cope with a fairly dysfunctional and challenging upbringing. That practice introduced me to reading memoir, and then writing memoir, and then finally landing in my chosen form of creative non-fiction. I have found creative non-fiction/essays to be a helpful form for reconciling my love of memoir with my attraction to cultural criticism.
What do you know now that you wish you’d known at the start of your career?
Something that I have known and then un-known and then had to find my way back to knowing again (humans being very forgetful!) is the simple advice that no amount of external validation can keep you going as a writer, if you don’t love the process. Writing is a very personal, solitary act, fundamentally – so if you do not take an amount of pleasure (even if it also comes with a lot of pain and discomfort!) from the experience of sitting with your laptop (or, more esoterically, typewriter, etc.) and working on a piece of writing, then it will be hard to build longevity into your career. The other thing that I have become aware of is that persistence trumps natural talent.
Which Australian authors and illustrators are influential for you?
I am influenced by my community of mentors and peers. Without the long friendships I have enjoyed with Felicity Castagna, Sheila Pham, Eileen Chong, Hayley Scrivenor, Cher Tan, and Alison Whittaker, I am sure I would be much poorer intellectually and emotionally.
Why are you a member of the ASA?
I am a member of the ASA because the organisation helps fulfil a vital role in creating fair, transparent, and flourishing conditions for writers in Australia. I have relied on the ASA from the very beginnings of my career for standard-setting around fair rates of pay, and, as I have progressed through my career, benefited from and admired their advocacy work, leadership, and provision of professional development opportunities, especially for writers in the mid-career stage who can sometimes fall through the cracks.
Find out more about Eda Gunaydin at edagunaydin.com.
