​​Mary Colussi is a writer.
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Her debut novel Touch Grass will be released by Penguin Random House on June 2nd, 2026. You can pre-order it here.
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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.
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It’s partly about an immortal sheep, which really sums up her whole vibe.
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Australian born and American raised, Mary holds a BFA in dramatic writing
from New York University's Tisch School of the arts. She recently completed an MFA in the same subject at Sydney's National Institute of Dramatic Art.
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She writes fiction, satire, plays, screenplays, TV episodes, 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.
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At the moment, she's based in Sydney, on the lands of the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation, to whom she pays her respects. Sovereignty was never ceded. Always was, always will be, Aboriginal land.