Sydney
Sydney – Thursday 14 August 2025
Western Sydney University
We are so excited to partner with Western Sydney University (WSU) for our second Stella Day Out in Sydney. Join authors Jumaana Abdu, Randa Abdel-Fattah and Mykaela Saunders as they discuss their Stella listed books and writing careers.
Reserve your spot for the whole evening here: https://events.humanitix.com/stella-day-out-western-sydney/tickets Please see below for the layout of the event.
Arrival and opportunity to view ‘Always Will Be’ exhibition
5pm – 5.45pm
Opening conversation – Mykaela Saunders (Always Will Be) in conversation with Kate Fagan – in Gallery
5.45pm
Dinner supplied
6.30pm – 7:15pm
Short creative readings from Mykaela Saunders, Jumaana Abdu, and Randa Abdel-Fattah
7:15pm
Conversation with Jumaana Abdu (Translations) and Randa Abdel-Fattah (Discipline); moderated by Sara M. Saleh
7:45pm
Event ends
8:30pm
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.
Kate Fagan is a writer, musician and scholar whose third volume, First Light, was shortlisted for the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards and the Age Book of the Year Award. She directs The Writing Zone, a mentoring program for emerging writers and arts workers from Western Sydney, and is a former Editor of How2 magazine (US). Kate is also an internationally esteemed songwriter whose album Diamond Wheel won the National Film and Sound Archive’s Folk Recording Award. She is currently Director of the WSU Writing and Society Research Centre and Chair of the Sydney Review of Books Advisory Board. Her most recent book is Song in the Grass (Giramondo, 2024).
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.
Randa Abdel-Fattah is an ARC Future Fellow at Macquarie University researching Arab and Muslim activism and social movements in Australia from the 1970s to date. She’s also a former lawyer and the multi-award-winning author of 12 books for children and young adults published in over 20 countries. Her new novel for adults, Discipline (University of Queensland Publishing), is out in September.
Sara M. Saleh is a writer/poet and human rights lawyer of Palestinian, Egyptian, and Lebanese heritage, who has shared her work on stages from Brooklyn to Bangalore. Her debut novel, Songs for the Dead and the Living (Affirm, 2023), and her poetry collection, The Flirtation of Girls (UQP, 2023), have received multiple national and international prizes and shortlistings between them, including winning the 2024 Barbara Jefferis Award and 2024 Anne Elder Award respectively. Her latest project, Ritual: Muslim Poetry Anthology, which she co-edited, has just been published with Sweatshop.
Rooted in the belief that literacy is a tool for liberation, Sara has organised communities of artists across continents to create sustainable, generative, and inclusive spaces for craft, connection, and critical consciousness.
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