Nonfiction author, journalist and academic Adam Sharp will be the 2026 Hedberg Writer-in-Residence at the University of Tasmania.
Dr Sharp has been awarded the $32,500 residency and will spend three months in Hobart writing, working with students and taking part in community conversations.
He will use the time to progress work on a memoir, Heroin Baby, which he has been developing with support from a Leverhulme Trust Fellowship.
“I’ve been writing for twenty years, across multiple countries and multiple forms, but my work has only recently started to address the long aftermath of addiction - both my parents were heroin addicts, and it turns out that takes a while to make sense of,” Adam said of his work.
“A lot of that sense-making happens out loud, in workshops and conversations with other writers, so getting to do that in Hobart, with its vibrant writing community, is a real gift.”
Described as “the poet laureate of lists”, Adam’s books about language and lists – The Correct Order of Biscuits (2020) and The Wheel Is Spinning But The Hamster Is Dead (2023) were both published by Hachette and developed from a social media following of over 95,000 language enthusiasts.
His short piece of memoir, “Play”, was published in Kit de Waal’s Common People: An Anthology of Working-Class Writers (Unbound, 2019). He also toured a show about international idioms, An Idiom Abroad, which has been described as “a reading, a monologue, and a stand-up performance all smushed into one”.
While living in the UK, Adam won The Literary Consultancy’s Pen Factor Award and was shortlisted for Penguin WriteNow and the Northbound Book Prize. He writes a regular column on international idioms for the Swiss daily Neue Zürcher Zeitung and has contributed to The Observer and The New European. He’s appeared on ABC Radio Melbourne, BBC Radio and RTÉ Radio Ireland.
Adam completed a PhD in Creative Writing at Northumbria University, specialising in memoir and childhood trauma.
Having worked and travelled across many lands, Adam says he is grateful for the fellowship, and is “looking forward to returning home” to Australia. He will arrive in Hobart in September to take up the residency.
Selection committee chair and Associate Professor in English Dr Robert Clarke said the University was excited to welcome its sixth Hedberg Writer-in-Residence.
“The Selection Committee had a seriously tough job this year. We had a selection of very impressive proposals from some amazing authors,” Dr Clarke said.
“Adam’s proposal, however, really impressed the committee for the depth of his writing as well as the kinds of engagements with emerging Tasmanian authors that he can offer.”
The Hedberg Writer-in-Residence program is offered by the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, with support from the Copyright Agency’s Cultural Fund.
Previous recipients include Tasmanian author and alumnus Robbie Arnott, who used the residency to work on his 2023 Age Book of the Year Limberlost, Gail Jones, Michelle Cahill, Eugen Bacon and Angela Slatter.