Rijn Collins is an award-winning Australian writer with a background in linguistics, a future in Iceland, and a passion for stories of the odd and obsessive.
Her first published writing was in punk zines in the nineties, collaborations between members of an international feminist punk collective. Over one hundred of her short stories have been published in anthologies and literary journals, broadcast on Australian and American radio, and performed at literary festivals.
Publications include Going Down Swinging, Corium, Wigleaf, The Big Issue, Sundog Lit, Verity La and River Teeth Journal, among others. She’s performed or spoken on panels at the Melbourne Writers Festival, Williamstown Literary Festival, Newstead Short Story Tattoo, Sorrento Writers Festival, Queenscliffe Literary Festival, Emerging Writers Festival, and Write Around the Murray festival. She regularly performs at literary and music festivals as part of the collaborative ensemble Stereo Stories. She’s been Artist-in-Residence at a tiny Icelandic fishing village up near the Arctic Circle, an experience which inspired her first novel, and again in a remote forest in Finland, with a studio filled with taxidermy, turpentine and cloudberry wine.
Her writing has won awards as far afield as New Orleans, Melbourne and New York, where her short story, ‘Almost Flamboyant,’ won the inaugural Sarah Lawrence Award for International Audio Fiction. Her memoir entry, ‘Spell for a Skin,’ was selected by judge Helen Garner as the winner of the 2021 Strange Days writing competition.
She’s the author of ‘Voice’ (Somekind Press, 2021), a micro-memoir detailing her exploration of identity through three languages she holds close: Icelandic, Flemish and Irish. Her debut novel, ‘Fed to Red Birds’ (Simon and Schuster, 2023) revolves around her love of the Icelandic land, language and reverence for storytelling, and the role of the outsider.
She’s deeply interested in stories of isolation and its effect on identity and intimacy.
She’s drawn to the cold, the quiet and the quirky.
She no longer eats her stories.
Her first published writing was in punk zines in the nineties, collaborations between members of an international feminist punk collective. Over one hundred of her short stories have been published in anthologies and literary journals, broadcast on Australian and American radio, and performed at literary festivals.
Publications include Going Down Swinging, Corium, Wigleaf, The Big Issue, Sundog Lit, Verity La and River Teeth Journal, among others. She’s performed or spoken on panels at the Melbourne Writers Festival, Williamstown Literary Festival, Newstead Short Story Tattoo, Sorrento Writers Festival, Queenscliffe Literary Festival, Emerging Writers Festival, and Write Around the Murray festival. She regularly performs at literary and music festivals as part of the collaborative ensemble Stereo Stories. She’s been Artist-in-Residence at a tiny Icelandic fishing village up near the Arctic Circle, an experience which inspired her first novel, and again in a remote forest in Finland, with a studio filled with taxidermy, turpentine and cloudberry wine.
Her writing has won awards as far afield as New Orleans, Melbourne and New York, where her short story, ‘Almost Flamboyant,’ won the inaugural Sarah Lawrence Award for International Audio Fiction. Her memoir entry, ‘Spell for a Skin,’ was selected by judge Helen Garner as the winner of the 2021 Strange Days writing competition.
She’s the author of ‘Voice’ (Somekind Press, 2021), a micro-memoir detailing her exploration of identity through three languages she holds close: Icelandic, Flemish and Irish. Her debut novel, ‘Fed to Red Birds’ (Simon and Schuster, 2023) revolves around her love of the Icelandic land, language and reverence for storytelling, and the role of the outsider.
She’s deeply interested in stories of isolation and its effect on identity and intimacy.
She’s drawn to the cold, the quiet and the quirky.
She no longer eats her stories.
Photo by Shannon Sexton
