Announcing the 2025 Patricia Kailis International Writing Fellow
Centre for Stories is pleased to announce Lathika George as the winner of the Patricia Kailis International Writing Fellowship.
October 1, 2025
Centre for Stories is pleased to announce Lathika George as the winner of the 2025 Patricia Kailis International Writing Fellowship. In November, the Fellow will undertake an eighteen day long paid residency at Centre for Stories in Perth, Western Australia.
Lathika George is a landscape designer, organic gardener and environmentalist. She is the author of The Suriani Kitchen/The Kerala Kitchen, and Mother Earth, Sister Seed, Travels Through India’s Farmlands. She also writes about food, farming and environmental issues for various publications, and is a participant in community and ecological work in the Palani Hills in South India.
The Patricia Kailis International Writing Fellowship aims to support the work of talented individuals who have demonstrated a commitment to ideas and practices that foster belonging and better cross-cultural understanding, deepen and broaden the literary culture in Western Australia, and offer emerging Western Australian writers access to writers of international reputation. Centre for Stories creative director Robert Wood judged the applications alongside William Phuan, Executive Director of the Singapore Book Council, and creative producer and curator Katherine Wilkinson.
Dr Patricia Kailis was a highly respected doctor, academic, astute businesswoman, community leader and philanthropist. The matriarch of the Kailis pearling and fishing family, Dr Kailis was also a remarkable medical researcher who lay the groundwork for the identification of genes related to certain diseases. She was a support to, and mentor of, women who aspired to achieve the heights of their profession and in turn becoming a support for the community. She had a deep interest in issues impacting Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander peoples. Dr Kailis was committed to the arts in all its diversity and in the opportunity for individual and communal expression.
The fellowship is made possible through the generous support of her son, Dr George Kailis.
Centre for Stories would also like to recognise Esther Karin Mngodo, whose application was highly commended by the judging panel.
Thank you to everyone who applied, and congratulations once again to Lathika George.
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