Writing with Heart and Humour with Rick Morton

This eight-session intensive is for writers at all career stages. Delivered by one of Australia’s leading journalists and non-fiction writers, this masterclass will help you develop new skills in bringing carefully observed levity to balance the darker matters in your writing projects.

Dates: 6:00-8:00pm (AEST), Tuesdays 4 August – 22 September 2026
Delivery: Online
Fees: $1495 or $1395 for Varuna Alumni
Applications close: 5:00pm (AEST) Thursday 25 June 2025
Places: 8 participants will be selected

When award-winning writer and journalist Rick Morton was four years old, his mother told him he was an alien sent here from ‘that big night sky by beings unknown to report back on what he sees.’

Rick took this mission to heart with the creation of his debut memoir, One Hundred Years of Dirt, which scooped up awards and short-listings, and was compared to George Orwell for its gritty portrayal of working-class deprivation and inequality. Rick’s voice is that enviable mix of abrasive yet compassionate, ironic yet tender, flinty yet humourous.

In this intimate online masterclass with Rick Morton, you will learn how to position yourself as an alien observer, and to bring nuance and humour to the story you would most like to tell. Each class will consist of discussion of the set texts (to be posted on our WetInk platform) and workshopping exercises, set in response to the group’s interests and questions.

This is a small group program for 8 participants.