Sydney
Sydney – Saturday 19 October 2024
Session 1 – Writing, Storying and Truth-Telling
11am – 12pm
Join 2023 Stella Prize shortlisted author Dr Debra Dank as she has a rich and stimulating discussion with the fabulous Mia Hull.Session 2 – Weaving Poetry into Fiction
1pm – 2pm
2020 Stella Prize longlisted author, Yumna Kassab, is interviewed by writer Michelle Law about intersecting poetry with fiction.Session 3 – 2024 Stella Prize winner Alexis Wright
3pm – 4pm
Join 2021 & 2018 Stella Prize-listed author Mirandi Riwoe in an inspiring discussion about her writing journey. Moderated by Beejay Silcox.
Dr Debra Dank is Gudanji/Wakaja, from the Barkly Tablelands in the Northern Territory of Australia.
For almost 40 years she has worked in a variety of roles in primary, secondary and tertiary education across Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia and the Northern Territory in urban and remote contexts. She is particularly interested in how narrative is practiced in Aboriginal communities and why semiotics is critical to understanding the breadth of communicative mechanisms and functions in this practice.
Her first book, We come with this place, won an unprecedented four categories in the 2023 NSW Premier’s awards, The University of Queensland 2023 Non-Fiction Book Award at the Queensland Literary Awards and the Australian Literature Society Gold Medal for 2023. It was also shortlisted for the 2023 Stella Prize, the Queensland Premier’s Award for a Work of State Significance and the People’s Choice Queensland Book of the Year Award and the Nonfiction Award at the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards.
Mia Hull is a Barkindji writer and radio maker from Ngemba Country in Far West NSW. Before joining AWAYE!, Mia presented FBi Radio’s flagship long-form interview program Out of the Box for three years, where she profiled some of Australia’s most fascinating people.
Mia’s work has been featured on BBC Sounds, ABC Radio Illawarra, RN Drive, Living Arts and Culture, Happy Mag and All The Best.
Yumna Kassab is a writer from Western Sydney. She is the author of The House of Youssef, Australiana and The Lovers. Her latest book, Politica, is available from Ultimo Press. It is an imagined history of the Arab world or else a feminine telling of politics. Her books have been listed for The Stella, Miles Franklin Award, Prime Minister’s Literary Awards, QLD Literary Awards, Victorian Premier’s Literary Award and NSW Premier’s Award. She is the inaugural Parramatta Laureate in Literature.
Michelle Law is a writer and actor – working in print, screen and stage – currently based on Gadigal Land. Her works include the plays, Single Asian Female (La Boite Theatre Company), Top Coat (Sydney Theatre Company), and Miss Peony (Belvoir St Theatre); the television show Homecoming Queens (SBS); and the book Asian Girls are Going Places (Hardie Grant). Her awards include two Australian Writers Guild Awards, the Queensland Premier’s Young Publishers and Writers Award, and the Arts & Culture 40 Under 40 Awards, which celebrates the country’s most influential Asian Australians. Michelle is also a widely published freelance author and a prolific speaker who regularly appears on panels and at festivals.
Mirandi Riwoe is the author of Sunbirds. Her novel, Stone Sky Gold Mountain, won the ARA Historical Novel Prize and the Queensland Literary Award for Fiction and was shortlisted for the Stella Prize and longlisted for the Miles Franklin Award. Her novella The Fish Girl won Seizure’s Viva la Novella and was shortlisted for the Stella Prize. The Burnished Sun is a collection of her short stories and novellas. Mirandi has a PhD in Creative Writing and Literary Studies (QUT).
Beejay Silcox is a writer and literary critic. Her reviews and cultural commentary regularly appear in national arts publications, and are increasingly finding an international audience including in the Times Literary Supplement, The Guardian, and The New York Times. She has been described as “the most significant new Australian critic in decades”. An award-winning creative writing teacher, Beejay has taught workshops across the globe, including in the US and Cairo. Her own short stories and essays have been selected for a number of high-profile Australian anthologies. Beejay has stories to tell. She eloped to Las Vegas, escaped from quicksand, and drove to Timbuktu in a car held together with a bra-strap. Beejay is the newly appointed Artistic Director of Canberra Writers Festival.
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