Canberra
Canberra – Saturday August 2 2025
Harry Hartog ANU Campus
The Australian National University,
153-11 University Ave, Acton ACT 2601
We are so excited to partner with Harry Hartog for our second Stella Day Out in Canberra. 2025 listed authors Cher Tan and Jumaana Abdu will be speaking about home, language, the hyperreal and more with local critics and writers. Tickets available to reserve in the session descriptions below.
Session 1: Cher Tan
10am – 11am
Join Cher Tan as she discusses her brilliant 2025 Stella longlisted book of essays Peripathetic. Moderated by Zoya Patel.
Session 2: Jumaana Abdu
11:30 – 12:30pm
2025 Stella shortlisted author Jumaana Abdu discusses her debut novel Translations. Moderated by Beejay Silcox.
Cher Tan is an essayist and critic. Her essays, criticism and other written work has been published widely. She is an editor at Liminal and the reviews editor at Meanjin. Her critically-acclaimed debut collection of essays, Peripathetic: Notes on (Un)belonging, is now out with NewSouth. She lives and works on unceded Wurundjeri Country.
Zoya Patel is the award-winning author of No Country Woman (Hachette, 2018), a memoir of race, religion and feminism, as well as the novel Once A Stranger (Hachette, 2023). She was formerly the editor of Lip Magazine, co-host of the Margin Notes podcast, and founder of the digital literary journal Feminartsy, which published and mentored emerging writers from 2014 to 2018.
Zoya has won numerous awards for her writing and editing, and has been published widely, including in The Guardian, the Australian Financial Review, ABC, SBS, Junkee, Overland, Meanjin, Sydney Morning Herald and more. She was a 2020 judge for the Stella Prize, and Chair of the 2021 Stella Prize Judging Panel.
Jumaana Abdu is the author of Translations (Vintage) which was shortlisted for the Stella Prize, the MUD Literary Prize, and a NSW Premier’s Literary Award. Her widely published fiction and essays have won the Dal Stivens Award, the Patricia Hackett Prize, and the Phoebe Journal fiction prize. During the day, she is a medical doctor.
Beejay Silcox is a book critic. Her work appears in high-profile publications across three continents, and is renowned for its resolute (some might say, foolhardy) honesty. In addition to her criticism, Beejay works as a professional reader: she’s a literary interviewer, festival programmer, editor and literary prize judge. And she has stories to tell. Beejay eloped to Las Vegas, escaped from quicksand, and drove to Timbuktu in a car held together with a bra-strap. She once had to be rescued – unironically – from a picnic at Hanging Rock.
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