Dr Georgia Phillips
Lecturer
Optimisation and Stabilisation
Integration Management Office
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. It was also listed in The Saturday Paper's best books of 2025 roundup list.
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 Australian Book Review, 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 five 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 and now Adelaide University:
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: So You Want to Write a Novel;
CRWR1001: Creative Writing The Essentials;
WRIT2000: Creative Writing Essentials 2 - Narrative Theory, Forms and Approaches to Practice;
CRWR4004: Hons Creative Writing Project;
CRWR4001: Hons Creative Writing Thesis;
WRIT2001: Fiction: Theory and Practice;
CREA3032: Art of the Novel.
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.
| Date | Institution name | Country | Title |
|---|---|---|---|
| The University of New South Wales | Australia | PhD Creative Writing/Literary Studies | |
| The University of New South Wales | Australia | Honours, Class 1. Creative Writing/Literary Studies | |
| The University of New South Wales | Australia | BA. English Literature |
| Year | Citation |
|---|---|
| 2026 | Phillips, G. (2026). Desperate, intelligent, irreverent: in Big Kiss, Bye‑Bye, Claire‑Louise Bennett breaks up with illusions. The Conversation. |
| 2026 | Phillips, G. (2026). Alpine sublime: Cut-up literature on grief. Australian Book Review, 484. |
| 2026 | Phillips, G. (2026). Being and non-being. Australian Book Review, 487. |
| 2026 | Phillips, G. (2026). In Praise of Rereading: Iterative Inhabitations and Sheltering the Paradise of Words. Southerly: a review of Australian literature. |
| 2025 | Walker, A., Lovell, B., Rozitis, S., Caldwell, A., Callus, V. Z., Collis, P., . . . Böhm, C. (2025). Ecopoetic encounters: unsettling anthropocentric assumptions via constraint-based anthologethnography. New Writing, 22(1), 1-18. |
| 2025 | Phillips, G. (2025). In Search of a Form of One's Own. Meanjin. |
| 2025 | Phillips, G. (2025). Uncertainties, mysteries, doubts: Madeleine Watts takes an elegiac road trip through the American Southwest. The Conversation. |
| 2024 | Phillips, G. (2024). Vanity, money and ‘angry masculine impastos’: Liam Pieper’s Appreciation is a Mordant Tale of a Tragically Flawed Artist. The Conversation. |
| 2024 | Phillips, G. R. (2024). The Shelters of Imagination: Logos, Franklin Street, St Peters, Marion and The Dreamhouse. TEXT, 28(Special 71), 1-7. |
| 2024 | Phillips, G. (2024). Tenderness and technical mastery: Anne Michaels’ poetic novel Held expands on the possibilities of historical fiction. The Conversation. |
| 2023 | Phillips, G. R. (2023). Review of Fiona Kelly McGregor's Iris. The Historical Novels Review, (106). |
| 2023 | Phillips, G. (2023). Review of Anna Funder's Wifedom: Mrs Orwell's Invisible Life. The Historical Novels Review. |
| 2023 | Phillips, G. (2023). Anne Enright’s bold new novel The Wren, The Wren is the work of a writer at the height of her power. The Conversation. |
| 2022 | Phillips, G. R. (2022). Beyond the Marram Grass: 1966. Antipodes, 36(1), 21-26. |
| 2022 | Phillips, G. (2022). Review of Mark Lamprell's The Secret Wife. The Historical Novels Review. |
| 2022 | Phillips, G. (2022). Review of Nicolas Rothwell's Red Heaven. The Historical Novels Review. |
| 2021 | Phillips, G. (2021). Review of Steven Conte's Tolstoy Estate. The Historical Novels Review. |
| 2021 | Phillips, G. (2021). Phillips, Georgia Rose. "Review of Favel Parrett’s There Was Still Love", The Historical Novels Review. Issue 92. May 2020.. The Historical Novels Review. |
| 2020 | Phillips, G. (2020). Phillips, Georgia Rose. "Review of Melissa Ashley’s The Bee and the Orange Tree", The Historical Novels Review. Issue 94. October. 2020.. The Historical Novels Review. |
| 2020 | Phillips, G. (2020). Phillips, Georgia Rose. 2020. "Review of Klaus Gietinger’s The Murder of Rosa Luxemburg", The Historical Novels Review. Issue 93. August.. The Historical Novels Review. |
| 2020 | Phillips, G. R. (2020). Review of Michelle Arrow’s The Seventies : The Personal, The Political and The Making of Modern Australia by Michelle Arrow. Historical Novel Review. |
| 2020 | Phillips, G. R. (2020). Passionfruit Politics. SOCIAL ALTERNATIVES, 39(4), 60. |
| 2020 | Phillips, G. R. (2020). Empathy and history: historical understanding in re-enactment, hermeneutics and education. Rethinking History, 24(1), 116-118. |
| 2020 | Phillips, G. (2020). Review of Michelle Arrow's The Seventies: The Personal, The Political and the Making of Modern Australia. The Historical Novels Review. |
| 2019 | Phillips, G. (2019). Review of Miriam Sved’s A Universe of Sufficient Size. Historical Novel Review, 56. |
| 2019 | Phillips, G. (2019). Rage Continued: A Review of Rebecca Traister’s Good and Mad. Tharunka. |
| 2019 | Phillips, G. (2019). A Brief History of Climate Terminology: A reflection on the connection between language and politics in climate discussions. The Quo. |
| 2019 | Phillips, G. (2019). Saving Face. Wheeler Centre Notes. |
| Year | Citation |
|---|---|
| 2025 | Phillips, G. R. (2025). The Bearcat. Australia: Picador Australia. |
| Year | Citation |
|---|---|
| 2025 | Phillips, G. (2025). New Balance. In B. Mullane (Ed.), Everything, All At Once. Ultimo Press. |
| Year | Citation |
|---|---|
| 2025 | Authors: Phillips G. Title: Waste. Extent: Poem. |
| 2025 | Authors: Phillips G. Title: Remembering Lesbos. Extent: Poem. |
| 2025 | Authors: Phillips G. Title: The Land Remembers. Extent: Poem. |
| 2025 | Authors: Phillips G. Title: Night Transit. Extent: Poem. |
| 2024 | Authors: Phillips G. Title: The Dreamhouse. Extent: Poem. |
| 2024 | Authors: Phillips GR. Title: Marion. Extent: Poem. |
| 2024 | Authors: Phillips G. Title: St Peters. Extent: Poem. |
| 2024 | Authors: Phillips G. Title: Franklin St. Extent: Poem. |
| 2024 | Authors: Phillips G. Title: Logos. Extent: Poem. |
| 2023 | Authors: Phillips G. Title: Aubade. Extent: Poem. |
| 2023 | Authors: Phillips G. Title: After Disgrace. Extent: Poem. |
| 2023 | Authors: Phillips G. Title: Cafeteria Lunch. Extent: Poem. |
| 2022 | Authors: Phillips GR. Title: Noble Rot. Extent: Poem. |
| 2021 | Authors: Phillips GR, Phillips G. Title: Red Carnation. Extent: Pg 38-47. |
| 2020 | Authors: Phillips G. Title: What the Night Asks. Extent: Poem. |
| 2018 | Authors: Phillips G. Title: Crocheting Dissent. Extent: 666 words. |