Mykaela Saunders

MYKAELA SAUNDERS is a Koori/Goori and Lebanese writer, critic and editor. Mykaela’s debut speculative fiction collection ALWAYS WILL BE (UQP 2024) won the David Unaipon Award, was shortlisted for the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards Indigenous Writers’ Prize and longlisted for The Stella Prize. Mykaela edited THIS ALL COME BACK NOW (UQP 2022), the world’s first anthology of blackfella spec fic, which won an Aurealis Award. Mykaela has won other prizes for fiction, poetry, essay writing and research, including the Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize and the Oodgeroo Noonuccal Indigenous Poetry Prize. Mykaela is a postdoctoral research fellow at Macquarie University researching First Nations speculative fiction. Mykaela worked in Aboriginal education in various capacities from 2003 to 2023, and has been teaching at the tertiary level since 2012. Her research explores her people’s past, present and future.