Brisbane
Brisbane – September 13 2025
Avid Reader, 193 Boundary Street, West End QLD 4101
Stella is thrilled to partner with Avid Reader for a second Stella Day Out in West End, Brisbane in September 2025.
Please reserve your seat and book your tickets through Avid Reader here.
SCHEDULE:
1.30PM: Arrival and drinks
Session 1:
2PM–3PM
Aunties, Mothers, Ancestors: Holding Story, Holding Country
Dr. Mykaela Saunders in conversation with Rhianna Patrick
Session 2:
3:15PM–4:15PM
The Dreaming Body: Inheritance, Memory and Poetic Voice
Manisha Anjali and Shastra Deo in conversation with Rae White
Tickets available here: https://avidreader.com.au/pages/12512-StellaDayOut-Brisbane2025
Dr. Mykaela Saunders is a Koori/Goori and Lebanese writer and the editor THIS ALL COME BACK NOW (UQP 2022), the world’s first anthology of blackfella speculative fiction, which won an Aurealis Award and was highly commended for the Small Press Network Book of The Year and the Booktopia Favourite Australian Book Award. Mykaela’s debut spec fic collection ALWAYS WILL BE (UQP 2024) won the David Unaipon Award, was shortlisted for the NSW Literary Award Indigenous Writers Prize, longlisted for The Stella Prize and highly commended for the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Indigenous Writing. Mykaela has won other prizes for fiction, poetry, essays and research, including the Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize and the Oodgeroo Noonuccal Indigenous Poetry Prize. Mykaela is a postdoctoral research fellow at Macquarie University, working on the project LAYING DOWN THE LORE: a survey of First Nations speculative, visionary and imaginative fiction.
Rhianna Patrick is a Torres Strait Islander media professional with family connections to the Zagareb (Mer) and Wagadagem (Mabuyag) clans. Rhianna spent nearly two decades at the ABC and is now the Head of Audio and Podcasts at IndigenousX.com.au. She also curates Spotify’s Original Storytellers playlist once a month and is currently co-curating an exhibition due to open later this year.
Manisha Anjali is the author of Naag Mountain (Giramondo, 2024). Naag Mountain was shortlisted for the Judith Wright Calanthe Award, longlisted for the Stella Prize and highly commended at the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards. Manisha has been a recipient of the Roderick Centre’s Writers on the Reef Residency, the Neilma Sidney Travel Grant, BLINDSIDE’s Regional Arts & Research Residency at Mooramong; and has been a Writer-in-Residence at Incendium Radical Library and a Hot Desk Fellow at The Wheeler Centre. She is the founder of Neptune, a research and documentation platform for dreams, visions and hallucinations. Manisha is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Melbourne.
Shastra Deo was born in Fiji, raised in Melbourne, and lives in Brisbane. Her first book, The Agonist (UQP 2017), won the 2016 Arts Queensland Thomas Shapcott Poetry Prize and the 2018 Australian Literature Society Gold Medal. Her second book, The Exclusion Zone (UQP 2023), was longlisted for the 2024 Australian Literature Society Gold Medal. She is still living.
Rae White is a queer non-binary transgender writer, and author of poetry collections Milk Teeth (UQP 2018) and Exactly As I Am (UQP 2022). Rae was awarded the Thomas Shapcott Poetry Prize in 2017, and has been shortlisted for the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards, Queensland Literary Awards, and Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards. Their debut picture book All the Colours of the Rainbow(Lothian Children’s Books/Hachette), with illustrations by Sha’an d’Anthes, was published in January 2025. Rae is the Creative Director and Founder of Uplift Poetry, a community poetry initiative; the Founding Editor of #EnbyLife, a journal for non-binary and gender diverse creatives; a co-host on the 4ZZZ radio show Tranzmission; and a member of the Board of Directors at Australian Poetry.
Help change the story
As a not-for-profit organisation with ambitious goals, Stella relies on the generous support of donors to help fund our work.
Every donation is important to us and allows Stella to continue its role as the leading voice for gender equality and cultural change in Australian literature.
Stella is a not-for-profit organisation with DGR status. All donations of $2 or more are tax-deductible.
