Writer/Reader/Academic

Dr Bec Kavanagh is a Melbourne-based writer and academic whose work examines the representation of women’s bodies in literature.

Bec regularly hosts and appears on panels for events such as MWF, A Day in Carlton and Clunes Booktown, as well as at various libraries across Victoria. She has judged numerous literary prizes, including the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award (2025/26), the Book of the Year Award (SPN), the Historical Novel Association Awards, the Davitt Awards, and local writing competitions. Her literary criticism can be found in The Guardian, Mascara & Australian Book Review. Bec’s fiction and non-fiction has been published in various journals, anthologies, and magazines including The Big Issue Fiction Edition (2022), Resilience (Ultimo Press, 2022), Meanjin, Overland and the Shuffle anthology.

Bec was the Schools Manager for the Stella Prize for five years, the inaugural chair of #LoveOzYA and the Youth Programming Manager at the Wheeler Centre from 2019-2024, where she co-conceived of and co-produced the hugely successful M/Other festival, as well as a variety of innovative, youth-led programs for young audiences including a live Choose-Your-Own Adventure, Broadside Teen Day, and Lunch Orders. Bec has taught and lectured at University of Technology Sydney, La Trobe University and Allen & Unwin’s Faber Academy (with Shivaun Plozza). In her capacity as an arts programmer, Bec has devised and produced Girls Write Up (for the Stella Prize) and Telling Tales (for the Wheeler Centre), and co-created M/OTHER with Jamila Khodja for the Wheeler Centre.

She is currently a Senior Tutor in Creative Writing and Publishing the University of Melbourne and project manager of LitUp for Australia Reads, and runs Body Writing & Sunday Stories events across Victoria.

I live and work on the lands of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation, where sovereignty has never been ceded. I pay my respects to the traditional owners of these lands, and to Elders past and present.