Gillian O’Shaughnessy

Gillian O’Shaughnessy is a journalist, writer, reader and interview facilitator. Please contact her at groshaughnessy@gmail.com for details 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 worked as a fill-in presenter on ABC Local Radio’s Breakfast, Morning and Afternoon programs before moving full-time 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, Fractured Lit, Cordite Poetry Review, Fudoki, Reflex Press, and Night Parrot Press, among others. She has upcoming work in Jellyfish Review and MoonPark 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 board member of WA’s independent publisher, Night Parrot Press.

She’s the founder and curator of the Facebook book club, Reading Between the Wines.

Facilitator

Gillian has interviewed a wide 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, Jane Fonda, Sir Ralph Fiennes, Taika Waititi, Edgar Wright, 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, Guy Garvey, Paul Kelly, Holden Sheppard and many others.

She is an experienced host and available to facilitate events. Please contact her via the email address listed for details.

Awards

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.