Karolina Ristevski is an award winning Macedonian Australian writer who grew up in Lewisham. She holds a Bachelor of Creative Arts from the University of Wollongong and was selected for the coveted Merrigong Emerging Playwrights Program. As a Writer in Residence at the 2019 Sydney Fringe Festival she completed her play Cate Fucking Blanchett, which made it to the final round of judging in the 2022 Shane and Cathryn Brennan Prize and garnered interest from the Royal Court Theatre in London. Her play River Was Here was STC’s 25th Patrick White Playwrights Award winner.

She is one of Suzie Miller’s mentees for 2025, further solidifying her place in the next generation of exciting playwrights.

She was longlisted for The Australian/Vogel Literary Award, with judges praising her work as ‘beguiling’ and recognising her as ‘a writer with rare talent.’ Her short story Wonderboy was published in Never Heard of Them: An Anthology for Emerging Writers, and her micro-fiction The Kiosk was performed by Little Fictions, featured at the Inner West Council’s Site and Sound Festival and broadcast on the Little Fictions podcast. She is a two-time finalist for the Born Writers Award with her stories Seventeen and The Experiment.

Her writing isn’t abstract ideas; it is drawn from real life, shaped into something theatrical and compelling and known for its distinctive voice. She continues to push boundaries with form, offering powerful stories for her audiences. Her latest play River Was Here offers a poignant exploration of how the past can both haunt and define us. It doesn’t nudge; it jolts, like a cattle prod. Some will flee. But those who stay will find themselves inside an artist’s mind staging its own psyche.