Event and Ticketing Details
Dates & Times
Monday 20 June
6:15 PM - 7:15 PM
The Next Big Thing is all about showcasing exciting new writers – and where better to discover the next crop of textual talent than at the Emerging Writers’ Festival?
In this special EWF edition of a Wheeler Centre staple, you’ll hear from Kate Mildenhall, Michelle Wright, Susie Anderson and Rajith Savanadasa in the cosy surrounds of The Moat.
Featuring
Kate Mildenhall
Kate Mildenhall is a writer and teacher. Her debut novel, Skylarking, was longlisted for Debut Fiction in The Indie Book Awards 2017 and the 2017 Voss Literary Award and her bestselling The Mother Fault was longlisted for the 2021 ABIA General Fiction Book of the Year and shortlisted for the 2020 Aurealis Awards. Kate teaches creative writing and co-hosts The First Time podcast - which features conversations with Australian writers - and is currently undertaking a PhD in creative practice at RMIT University. Kate lives in Hurstbridge on Wurundjeri lands, with her partner and two children. The Hummingbird Effect is her third novel.
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Michelle Wright
Michelle Wright is a writer of short stories. Her debut collection, Fine, was shortlisted for the Victorian Premier’s Award for an Unpublished Manuscript, and will be published by Allen and Unwin in 2016 – followed by her debut novel in 2017.
She has been awarded a Writers Victoria Templeberg Fellowship, A Faber Academy scholarship and was a 2015 Laughing Waters Artist-in-Residence.
Susie Anderson
Susie Anderson writes from the nexus of compassion and resistance. Her poetry and nonfiction are widely published online and in print, such as in Archer, Artist Profile, Artlink, un magazine, Growing Up Aboriginal in Australia and in many poetry anthologies.
In 2018, she was runner-up in the Overland Poetry Prize and awarded the Emerging Writer's Fellowship at State Library Victoria; in 2019, she was awarded a Writer's Victoria Neilma Sidney Grant and a recipient of the Overland Writers Residency. In 2020, she edited the online journal, Tell Me Like You Mean It Volume 4, for Australian Poetry and Cordite Poetry Review. She is a 2021 black&write! Fellow.
Her professional practice is as a digital producer in the arts and creative industries ranging from Sydney, London and Melbourne. Leveraging her position within institutions, she attempts to bring about change by uncovering and amplifying stories from her own and other communities. Descended from the Wergaia and Wemba Wemba peoples of Western Victoria, she currently lives on Boon Wurrung land in Melbourne.
Rajith Savanadasa
Rajith Savanadasa was born in Sri Lanka. He runs Open City Stories, a website documenting the lives of a group of asylum seekers in Melbourne. Rajith was shortlisted for the Asia-Europe Foundation short story prize in 2013, the Fish Publishing short story prize in 2013 and received a Wheeler Centre Hotdesk Fellowship in 2014. His debut novel, Ruins, will be published by Hachette Australia in 2016.