NAKITA KITSON
NAKITA KITSON
Writing and painting landscapes from Wardandi Boodja
writing
Nakita's writing reflects on her experience as a queer, Autistic woman living in regional WA. Her perspective brings landscapes into vivid detail, exploring the ways humans and places intersect, heal and hurt each other.
Nakita has completed two literary historical fiction manuscripts:
Along the Lightning Ridge is an ecological novel – the story of a woman who must learn to listen to the land. It was shortlisted for the 2023 UWA Publishing Dorothy Hewett Award.
In 1840, when the tiny settlement of Talinup is abandoned, one woman decides to remain.
Georgie’s solitude is as liberating as it is dangerous, and she soon falls prey to the wild south-west Australian coast. Isolated, injured and close to starvation, her catalogue of edible plants becomes a confessional. This more truthful history of the settlement reveals her affair with a Noongar Elder, her complicity in murder, and the drastic actions she took to secure her freedom.
Stories from a Safe Distance is set at the height of WWII in Fremantle. The town braces for impact as Japanese forces bomb the north coast, the Germans sink the HMAS Sydney, and the Americans arrive as reinforcements. The story begins in the lead up to Betty’s Junior Exams, and explores her interactions with her neighbour, Marjorie, who is in an abusive marriage. Betty’s story alternates with the story of Joan, who is the daughter of a Noongar family living under an exemption card in Fremantle. Based on lived experience, the novel gives new insight into WWII in Australia through authentic female and Aboriginal voices.
Drive On
Camping in the Tassie Highlands is not for the broken-hearted. Winner of the 2024 Tasmanian Writers' Prize.
Digging
Michael runs away to the desert fringes to dig for truths. Third place in the 2023 Southern Cross short story competition.
Concrete Feminism
A poetic exploration of queer renovation.
Poetry collection published in MONA magazine, 2023.
Unspoken
A family history of silence and carpet sweeping. Short story published in the E.M. Fletcher Family History Collection, 2022.
Climbing Out
A young girl perches at the top of an old Norfolk pine, looking beyond the asbestos fences and parched lawns of her hometown.
Short story published in The Lighthouse, 2021.
art
Original oil paintings are available in Talinup/Augusta.
Commissions will be considered on an individual basis.