Dr Georgia Phillips

Dr. Georgia Rose Phillips is an award-winning writer who publishes fiction, poetry, non-fiction, literary criticism and academic scholarship.
 
She joined the school of Humanities as a Lecturer in Creative Writing (Level B) at the beginning of 2023, after teaching across the Creative Writing Program at The University of New South Wales (UNSW). She holds a BA. English Literature with First Class Honours in Creative Writing and a PhD in Creative Writing (UNSW). 
 
Her literary-historical novel, The Bearcat, was published with Picador (Aus/NZ) on 29th April 2025. The work was listed as one of the most anticipated Australian novels for 2025 by both The Guardian and The Australian’s best books lists. 
 
The work has received a strong critical reception thus far. Reviews have appeared in a comprehensive mix of major Australian newspapers and prestigious literary journals including (but not limited to) The Conversation (with further syndications), The Australian, Australian Book Review, Meanjin, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Canberra Times, In Review, Readings, Books+Publishing, Newtown Review of Books, The Advertiser and more etc. 
 
Critics have praised the work’s lyrical prose, acuity, meticulous research, psychological complexity, formal innovation and finely wrought examination of power and the legacies of maternal influence.
 
In The Australian Book Review, Susan Midalia described The Bearcat as an “intelligent, ambitious, and an admirably inventive novel” that it is “linguistically precise, poignantly understated and deftly metaphoric.” She wrote that “The Bearcat shows a short story writer’s talent for combining conciseness and resonance to create engaging moments in time. The writing is enhanced by the poet’s keen ear for the sounds of words and the rhythm of the sentences.”
 
Beyond the strong critical reception of The Bearcat, the merits of Phillips’ shorter-form works have been formally acknowledged with literary prizes and shortlistings. In 2022, her short story ‘Beyond the Marram Grass’ was a shortlisted finalist in the American Association of Australasian Literary Studies (AAALS) Prize. In 2021, her short story ‘New Balance’ was a fiction winner in the Ultimo Literary Prize. In 2018, her creative nonfiction novella, Holocene, was a runner-up in the Scribe Nonfiction Literary Prize.
 
Phillips’ poetry, short fiction, creative nonfiction, literary criticism and academic work has been published across a series of leading literary and academic journal both nationally and internationally. Her work has appeared in Antipodes: A Global Journey of Australian/New Zealand Literature, Going Down Swinging, Kill Your Darlings, Literary Veganism, Meanjin, Meniscus Literary Journal, Overland, Social Alternatives, The Conversation, Verity La, Wheeler Centre Notes and more. 
 
In 2021, she was anthologised as one of the leading emerging Australian writers in Ultimo Press’s book Everything, All At Once (2021).
 
Phillips’ has also published peer-reviewed works with several Q1 academic journals. These include the two Q1 Creative Writing organ journals: New Writing: The International Journal for the Practice and Theory of Creative Writing and Text: Journal of Writing and Writing Courses. She has also published academic work in the Q1 journal Rethinking History: The Journal of Theory and Practice.
 
Alongside this, Phillips has published four review articles in The Conversation that have contributed to essential debates surrounding contemporary literature.
 
Georgia’s research area is focused on exploring emergent and experimental/literary narrative modes, literary aesthetics, and the legacy of literary modernism on contemporary writing. More recently, she has been focusing on post-postmodern literary historical writings and the philosophical, ethical and ideological implications of re-working modernist aesthetic strategies to negotiate historiography in fiction.
 
She has a keen research interest in the phenomenological process of literary composition, psychoanalysis, literary modernism, literary aesthetics, contemporary feminism and life writing, LGBTQIA+ literature and representation, narrative depictions and treatment of time and temporality, the philosophy of history and pastness, narratology, contemporary poetry and poetics, and ecocriticism/eco-feminism. She is interested in animal ethics and literature's role in challenging speciesism.
 
Georgia is working on her second novel and a book length collection of poems and is represented by Jane Novak at Jane Novak Literary Agency: https://www.janenovak.com/
 
Her website can be viewed here: https://www.georgiarosephillips.com/
 
Prior to her postgraduate studies, Georgia worked as both a writer and editor in print and digital media and as a freelance academic editor for scholars both inside and outside the discipline.
 
Courses she convenes and teaches into at The University of Adelaide:
CRWR2001: The Short Story;
CRWR2006: The Politics of Writing;
CRWR2013: The Writer's Voice: Intersections in Creative Writing;
CRWR2016: Narrative: Where the Story Starts;
CRWR3002: The Art of the Novel;
CRWR1001: Creative Writing The Essentials.
 
She is currently writing the new curriculum for WRIT2001 Fiction: Theory and Practice for Adelaide University.
 
Past courses taught at The University of New South Wales:
Arts1010 The Life of Words;
Arts 1011 Inventing the Self: Creative Writing in the Digital Age;
Arts 3023 Advanced Fiction Writing.