Gillian O’Shaughnessy

Gillian O’Shaughnessy is a journalist, writer and facilitator from Fremantle in Western Australia. She spent 25 years working in news and radio for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. She moderates interviews and hosts events, specialising in books and literature. She is a submissions editor for the US Literary Journal, SmokeLong Quarterly.

Gillian is also a short fiction author who has been nominated for the US Pushcart prize twice. She has won the UK Reflex Flash fiction award, Fractured Lit Anthology Prize, and the WA Love to Read Local Prize.

In 2022 she was shortlisted in the Bridport Prize for Flash Fiction, the Oxford Flash Fiction Award and the Fractured Lit Reprint Prize, and longlisted in the Reflex Award for Flash Fiction.

You can contact her at groshaughnessy@gmail.com for more details and speaking fees.

Journalist and Broadcaster

Gillian started as a cadet reporter with ABC News in 1996 and stayed with the national broadcaster as a journalist and presenter in News and Current Affairs and Local Radio in Perth and across Western Australia for 24 years.

She has worked across radio, television and online news as a reporter, presenter and senior editor. She moved from news to local radio in Perth in 2010 to present the Afternoon Show until December 2020.

Judith Lucy at the Regal Theatre in 2021

Perth Writers Festival

Gillian curated the 2022 Writers Weekend for Perth Festival on a theme of Wardan, held in the beautiful grounds of the Fremantle Arts Centre. Sessions featured interviews with Helen Garner, Claire G. Coleman, Michael Robotham, Hannah Kent, Elfie Shiosaki, Michelle de Kretser, Pip Williams, Julia Baird and many more. The closing address was delivered by four times Miles Franklin winner, Tim Winton.

Writing

Gillian is an award-winning author of short fiction, with work published in journals and anthologies in Australia and internationally, including in SmokeLong Quarterly, Splonk, Fractured Lit, MoonPark Review, Cordite Poetry Review, Fudoki, Reflex Press, and Night Parrot Press, among others. She has upcoming work in Jellyfish Review.

Her essay, Perth in Conversation appears in Perth: A Guide for the Curious, (UWA Publishing, 2016) and she has words featured in the new WA Museum, Boola Bardip.

She is a submissions editor for the flash narrative journal, SmokeLong Quarterly and a reader for the UK Welkin Writing Prize and former board member of WA’s independent publisher, Night Parrot Press.

She is obsessively devoted to books and reading and curates the Facebook book club, Reading Between the Wines.

Facilitator

Gillian has interviewed a range of guests on radio, television and at live events, including for ABC News, ABC Radio Perth, the Perth Writers Festival, the Margaret River Readers and Writers Festival, Ubud Writers and Readers Festival and Writing WA.

Her extensive interviews include conversations with Sir Ian McKellen, Hilary Mantel, Helen Garner, Grace Tame, Jennifer Down, Jane Fonda, Sir Ralph Fiennes, Taika Waititi, Edgar Wright, Heather Rose, Elizabeth Gilbert, Magda Szubanski, John Cleese, Craig Silvey, Tim Winton, Christos Tsiolkas, Ben Okri, Judith Lucy, James Patterson, Patricia Cornwall, the late P.D James, Bill Bailey, Heather Morris, Elfie Shiosaki, Guy Garvey, Paul Kelly, GIna Williams, Holden Sheppard and many others.

She is an experienced host and is available to facilitate events. Please contact her via the email address listed for details. (Note: Gillian will be overseas from December 2022 until June 2023 and unavailable until her return.)

Awards

Gillian has won the UK Reflex Flash Fiction award, been shortlisted for the Bridport Prize, the Oxford Flash Fiction Award, Bath Flash Fiction and the Fractured Lit 2022 Reprint Prize, among others.

In December 2020, Gillian won the UK Reflex Flash Fiction prize, she was shortlisted for the Bath Flash Fiction Award, and a finalist in the London Independent Story Prize. In 2021 she was nominated for a US Pushcart Prize for her small fiction piece, Mouse and was longlisted for the Wigleaf top 50 best small fictions. She placed first in Writing WA’s Love to Read Local 100-word competition in June 2021 for her story, The view from apartment 95 on the Wednesday afternoon. Her story, Salt City Runaway was one of twenty selected in an international flash narrative competition, judged by author, Kathy Fish for an anthology published in 2021 by Fractured Lit.