Hot Desk Edition #2

Asiel Adan Sanchez is an organic, gluten-free, vegan, single origin, ethically sourced gender fluid. They may be found in late-night hospital shifts writing lines of poetry in between melancholic insulin orders. Born and raised in Mexico, their work is an attempt to reconcile culture, race, gender and sexuality. They spend their free time kissing boys and crying in public.

Stephen Pham is a Vietnamese-Australian writer from Cabramatta. He is an original member of SWEATSHOP Writers' Collective His work has appeared in Overland, Meanjin, Griffith Review and Sydney Review of Books. In 2018, Stephen received the NSW Writer's Fellowship from Create NSW to commence work on his debut manuscript Vietnamatta.

Jamie Marina Lau is a multidisciplinary artist and the author of Pink Mountain on Locust Island. With explorations focusing on language, Jamie's work meditates on a landscape exploring dis-location of culture and space. Her second novel Gunk Baby will be published in May 2020 with Brow Books.

Christian is a Melbourne-based actor, writer and theatremaker. He graduated from the Victorian College of the Arts with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Theatre Practice (2014). His theatre investigates the nature of grief, physical ritual, the limitations of language, and phenomenological performance, and he is fascinated (perhaps morbidly so) by speculative environmental literature.

Christian was awarded Best Emerging Writer at Melbourne Fringe 2016 for How Can You Sleep At Night, and has continued to build this catalogue of Climate Fiction with the 24-hour play generator Tipping Points for the Emerging Writer’s Festival and eco-activist drama Fall Where They May.                                                     

Christian’s theatre credits include: #howtodisappear (Melbourne Fringe); Plus Sign Attached (Living Positive Victoria & VCA); In The Dark (Metanoia Theatre); How Can You Sleep At Night (Melbourne Fringe); The Bells (Theatre Research Institute); Shrine (Kin Collective); and Surprise Party for Jem and Dead Max (La Mama).

Magan Magan has read his work at the National Gallery of Victoria, the National Young Writers Festival, the Emerging Writers Festival and Melbourne Poets Union. His work has been published in Hyde magazine, Melbourne Writers festival, literary arts journal Offset, Cordite Poetry Review and anthologies Shots from the Chamber and Hunter Anthology of Contemporary Australian Feminist Poetry.

Melissa Manning’s short fiction and literary non-fiction has been widely published, including in Award Winning Australian Writing, Best Small Fictions (US), To Carry Her Home (UK), Overland, the Big Issue, and Tasmania 40°South.

She was awarded a Varuna Residency Fellowship to work on her novel, Written on Bark, and a place on the ACT Writers’ HARDCOPY program for her novel Island.  She is working on a short story collection, South West, with the support of an ASA Emerging Writers’ Mentorship and a Grace Marion Wilson Glenfern Fellowship.

Manning won the 2015 Overland Story Wine Prize, and the Tasmanian Writer’s Prize and has placed or been shortlisted in the Overland VU Short Story Prize, Alan Marshall Short Story Prize, My Brother Jack Award and the Bath Flash Fiction Award.