ABOUT

​​Mary Colussi is a writer.

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Australian born and American raised, she holds a BFA in dramatic writing from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. She's currently working towards an MFA in the same subject at Sydney's National Institute of Dramatic Art. 

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Her speculative fiction novel Touch Grass won the 2025 Penguin Literary Prize, with one judge describing it as "audacious, funny and anarchic." Additionally, Touch Grass was longlisted for Hachette Australia’s 2024 Richell Prize for Emerging Writers. 

 

It’s partly about an immortal sheep, which really sums up her whole vibe.

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She writes fiction, satire, plays, screenplays, TV pilots, script coverage, and inexplicable additions to her Notes app. She was shortlisted for the 2025 Katie Lees Fellowship and received a 2025 Residential Fellowship at Varuna, the National Writers' House. Her work has been published by BuzzFeed, The Belladonna, Points in Case, Rejection Letters, and more. 

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At the moment, she's based in Sydney.​​​​

 

Mary would like to acknowledge the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation, the traditional custodians of the land on which she lives and works, and pay her respects to Elders past and present. Sovereignty was never ceded. Always was, always will be, Aboriginal land.​

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