Bonny Cassidy
Bonny Cassidy is an Australian author of Irish and German descent. She lives off-grid on Dja Dja Wurrung land, in a native forest in Central Victoria, south-east Australia. Bonny is the author of three poetry collections, most recently Chatelaine (Giramondo Publishing, 2017) which was partly composed through a touring grant in Ireland and was shortlisted for the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards. She also co-edited the anthology, Contemporary Australian Feminist Poetry (Hunter Publishers, 2016). Bonny’s essays on Australian literature and culture have been widely published, and she is Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at RMIT University, Melbourne. Bonny’s first book of nonfiction, Monument is forthcoming in 2023. A hybrid of poetry, archival research, travel writing, historical fiction and micro-essays, it explores the material and psychological legacy of her colonial migrant forebears on unceded lands.
At Watershed Studios, Bonny is developing new pieces of creative nonfiction drawn from her journals of learning to know a forest. She is also researching the connected histories of Irish and Australian land modification, enclosure and colonisation.