Satara Uthayakumaran

OCLW’s Global Majority and Underrepresented Writers’ Programme is a highly competitive initiative offering eight scholarships to life-writers whose voices have historically been marginalised in publishing and academia. Alongside dedicated seminars and lectures, scholars receive skills training, mentorship, and community support. The Programme aims to ensure that the future of life-writing more fully reflects the broad and diverse range of voices that surround us.

Agents and publishers are warmly encouraged to contact scholars directly.

Satara Uthayakumaran is an Australian writer and advocate whose work is grounded in lived experience at the intersections of race, gender, disability, and migration. She is the daughter of two survivors of the Sri Lankan Civil War and the sister of a person with multiple disabilities who communicates through Auslan. Her interest in life-writing emerges from these intersecting perspectives, informing her commitment to exploring structural inequality and social justice with nuance and care. She approaches life-writing as a means of documenting marginalised experiences, while also reflecting critically on the ethical responsibilities of representation.

Project Details:

In 2025, Satara was appointed Australia’s Youth Representative to the United Nations. In this capacity, she is undertaking a national listening tour across schools, detention centres, regional towns, and remote communities to gather insights into the experiences of young Australians. The project she will be undertaking as part of her scholarship will draw on this journey, combining reportage, testimony, and personal reflection to produce a manuscript that documents the diverse challenges and forms of resilience encountered by young people across the country.

The project will engage with a range of issues including systemic injustice, youth incarceration, disability, and the ongoing impacts of colonialism, while also highlighting grassroots leadership, community organising, and youth-led change. Alongside these narratives, the manuscript will include Satara’s own reflections on identity, advocacy, and public service. The completed work will contribute both to the national conversation on youth policy and to international dialogues through its presentation at the United Nations General Assembly. During her time at OCLW, Satara aims to refine the structure and scope of the manuscript for publication, ensuring it serves as a rigorous and enduring account of contemporary youth experience in Australia.

Selected Publications/Projects:

Satara has published opinion pieces in The Sydney Morning Herald, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, SBS, and The Canberra Times. She is also the author of a forthcoming chapter on youth advocacy in Australia, to appear in Palgrave Studies in Young People and Politics.

Her portfolio can be accessed here.

Contact Details:

Email: satara.uthayakumaran@gmail.com

LinkedIn: Satara Uthayakumaran