Gillian O’Shaughnessy

Hello! I’m Gillian, a journalist, writer and facilitator from Fremantle in Western Australia. I spent 25 years working in news and local radio for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and now I write, moderate interviews and host events, specialising in books and literature. I am obsessed with reading and writing short fiction and I’m a submissions editor for the US Literary Journal, SmokeLong Quarterly.

I’ve been nominated for the US Pushcart prize twice, won the UK Reflex Flash fiction award, Fractured Lit Anthology Prize, and the WA Love to Read Local Prize. In 2022 I was shortlisted for the Bridport Prize for Flash Fiction, the Oxford Flash Fiction Award, the Fractured Lit Reprint Prize, and longlisted in the Reflex Award for Flash Fiction. You can read some of my work in the Small Fictions tab of this page and more details about me and my work below.

You can contact me at groshaughnessy@gmail.com for work requests and 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 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 Jellyfish Review, SmokeLong Quarterly, Splonk, Fractured Lit, MoonPark Review, Cordite Poetry Review, Fudoki, Reflex Press and Night Parrot Press, among others.

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, online, for 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

In 2022, Gillian was shortlisted for the UK Bridport Prize for flash fiction, the Oxford Prize Flash Fiction Award, longlisted for the Reflex Flash Fiction Prize and her story, In This Tale of a Suburban Tiger, the Part of the Mother is Played by a Bird was nominated for a Pushcart Prize by Irish Flash Journal, Splonk.

Gillian won the UK Reflex Flash Fiction prize in December 2021, she was shortlisted for the Bath Flash Fiction Award, and was a finalist in the London Independent Story Prize the same year. She was nominated for a US Pushcart Prize for her short 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 the inaugural anthology from US journal, Fractured Lit.