top of page

Vince Ruston

I'm a professional writer and editor with nearly ten years of experience in the industry, including a first-class Honours degree and an almost-completed Master's. Below is a portfolio of some of my personal creative work.

Image by Niranjan _ Photographs

Like a Cat Out of Hell

Louise Image_Chi Pham Unsplash.jpeg

Louise (extract)
The Wheeler Centre

Gee.jpeg

'My Chemical Romance: on Queer Emo Friendship'
Archer Magazine

cats 2007_edited.jpg

'Year of the Cat'
Emerging Writers' Festival: Playlist: Love

Notebook and Pen

'Q&A With Vince Ruston'
The Suburban Review

Avocado with Seed

'Joy and the Flesh of Fruit'
Emerging Writers' Festival Podcast

Fish Scale Texture

'Blood, Salt and Fish Guts'
The Suburban Review

KYD-September-Feature-Full-e150434680032

'We Really Need You Tonight'
Kill Your Darlings

SEPTEMBER 2017

Representations of sex work tend to focus on either titillation or exploitation. But for many escorts, inadequate regulation of the industry both reflects and enforces the ongoing stigma they face.

​

On my time in the adult industry. Shortlisted for the 2018 Woolhara Digital Non-Fiction Prize.

JULY 2020

I can feel the sway of the ocean roiling like nausea, reverberating up to where my hands are wrapped around the rod.

​

A short story about an AMAB, genderqueer 19 year old and their father, trying to understand each other and reconnect through a once-loved pastime.

DECEMBER 2020

I flush from the collarbones up, roses bleeding in my cheeks. The way she watches me makes me want to cover myself in fig leaves.

​

For the Emerging Writers' Festival's podcast 'Vignettes' I was asked to respond to the theme of 'moth'. Here you can find the recording and transcript.

JANUARY 2021

'I love playing around with words in that way, trying to find exactly the right one, so getting the imagery of that act into words was more playful and joyful than difficult.'

​

Associate editor Maya Pilbrow interviews me about my short story for issue #19 Echo, 'Blood, Salt and Fish Guts'.

JUNE 2021

For The Emerging Writers' Festival's online event Playlist: Love, I wrote an ode to my dad's passion for music, the Geelong Cats AFL team, and the combining factor: 'Year of the Cat', the 1976 song by Al Stewart.

DECEMBER 2021

They were the band that brought my friendship group together – a strange bunch of queer goth-slash-emo teens affectionally self-dubbed The Bra Tree Gang.

​

For the tenth anniversary of My Chemical Romance's last studio album, I wrote about what the band meant for me, as a teenager coming to terms with sexuality, gender, and neurodivergence. 

APRIL 2022

I was very fortunate to be awarded a Hot Desk Fellowship from The Wheeler Centre in 2020. This fellowship offers a stipend and workspace in The Wheeler Centre building with the aim of aiding emerging writers to develop a project over three months. You can read an extract from the experimental poetic-prose novel I worked on during my Hot Desk here.

JUNE 2024

A short story about a newly fledged vampire trying to make her way in the world, and save her cat.

*

bottom of page