Ruby Hillsmith is a writer, editor and poet based in Melbourne, on Wurundjeri land.

Ruby was a 2020-2021 Wheeler Centre Hot Desk Fellow, selected on the basis of her non-fiction project Little Islands, Dead Sea, which examines the culture and future of psychiatry in Australia. Ruby was also a Grace Marion Wilson Write-Ability poetry fellow at Writers Victoria. Ruby was shortlisted alongside 10 other writers in the 2020 Bruce Dawe Poetry Prize, which drew from a pool of over 1400 entries. 

Her recent writing has appeared in Griffith Review, Australian Poetry Journal, Cordite Poetry Review, The Victorian Writer, Honi Soit, Sick Leave Journal, Suspiria and on the Emerging Writers’ Festival podcast. Ruby has discussed her work on the ABC Radio National program Big Ideas and on a Writers Victoria panel celebrating the International Day of People with Disability.

In 2018 she moved from Sydney to Melbourne to study writing and editing at RMIT University. In 2019, Ruby was Co-Editor-in-Chief of Visible Ink journal and interned at Arts Access Victoria. She aims to produce work that is the poetic equivalent of the smiling imp emoji.

Photo taken by Finn Bryson.