About
Tina Cartwright is a widely-published writer based in Naarm/Melbourne. Her work examines the commodification of identity, disconnection, the ethics of art, and money.
Her writing is published in The Guardian, The Saturday Paper, The New York Times, Overland, SBS and The Victorian Writer, among others.
She holds a Graduate Diploma in Secondary Teaching (English and Spanish) and a Bachelor Of Arts in Linguistics from The University of Otago. In 2008 she was awarded a prestigious International Languages Abroad Scholarship in conjunction with the Ministerio de Ecucación, Formación Profesional y Deportes to teach English in Spain. In 2011 she studied
Superior Spanish, Art and Culture of Indigenous People and Contemporary Mexican Fiction at UNAM in Mexico City.
She has taught Languages and Creative Writing in Spain, Mexico, Australia and New Zealand.
In 2024 she is a KSP Writers' Centre Fellow and was longlisted for the 2024 Michael Gifkins Award for her novel Bleak and Bright. Her novel The Krill and the Whale was longlisted for the 2023 Michael Gifkins Prize for an Unpublished Manuscript. Her short story Octopus was runner-up in the 2021 takahē short story competition. Her short fiction was shortlisted for the 2017 ABWF short story competition and was highly commended in the South Island Short Story Competition.
In 2022 she was part of the Hidden Nerve Program offered by the ACT Writers' Centre. In 2020 she studied Novel Writing at Faber Academy with Emily Bitto and Sophie Cunningham.
In 2023 she coordinated Melbourne on Sub Emerging Writers' Evening. She has completed a three-month internship with Broadsheet Media and worked with Cornerstones Literary Consultancy in their mentorship program. She studied Scriptwriting with Metro TV in Sydney and her monologue Masha's Fire was performed by Soot Theatre Company in Geelong in 2021.
She is interested in Euhemerism and Linguistic Typology. Her work frequently focuses on identity and belonging in the broadest sense.