UQP announces the recipient of the 2025 UQP Writing Mentorship

UQP and The University of Queensland’s School of Communications and Arts are pleased to announce that Missy Burrell is the recipient of the 2025 UQP Writing Mentorship.

The UQP Writing Mentorship was established to share knowledge, nurture creativity and develop culturally important stories, and is open to current students and recent graduates of UQ postgraduate writing programs.

Missy will receive editorial support and advice from the UQP team to develop her non-fiction work, The Less you See.

With an extensive media background spanning news, television, and digital storytelling, Missy Burrell brings a fusion of creative instinct and journalistic rigour to her work. A Master of Writing, Editing and Publishing graduate and current PhD candidate at the University of Queensland, she’s exploring how AI may safely support the research and creative process in nonfiction writing.

The Less you See is a clever exploration of Missy’s grandfather’s life as a famous illusionist and escapologist. A promising and original work, it is based on interviews and research, but demonstrates real narrative flair and insight.

The author describes The Less you See as a ‘non-fiction work shaped like a magic trick, with misdirection and memory, grief and glitter, presence and absence’. The UQP judging panel described it as ‘fresh, distinctive and engaging; this is a writer who has a unique story to tell and is developing a manuscript that combines biography, history and magic’.

Missy will receive mentoring from UQP Publishing Director Madonna Duffy on her manuscript.

Applications for the 2026 mentorship will open mid-2026.