Eli Sutherland (they/them) is passionate about creating new sci-fi and fantasy worlds, queering mononormative relationship structures through their writing, and bringing writers together. They are a non-binary, queer, and disabled creative, the Festival Director of the Trans Book Festival, the Treasurer of the Board of Overland, and studying a Master of Arts (Writing and Literature) at Deakin University.
Their sapphic, polyamorous crossover fantasy novel, No One Without the Other, has been awarded a 2026 Varuna Residential Fellowship, and they were the winner of the 2025 Mentone Public Library poetry competition, a finalist in the Pearl Prize 2024, Frontier Poetry’s 2023 Ekphrastic Poetry Prize, and the 2023 OutStanding LGBTQIA+ Short Story Awards, and longlisted for the University of Canberra 2024 Health Poetry Prize.
Eli chaired the Queer and Trans Young Adult Writing panel at the inaugural 2025 Trans Book Festival, and deliver Worldbuilding for Science Fiction and Fantasy workshops and Queer/Trans Literary Speed Friending sessions. Their writing has appeared in Cordite, Mascara Review, StylusLit, Swamp Magazine, Left Brain Media, ScratchThat Magazine, Queer Out Here, and more.
