Things My Mother Never Told Me

In 2017, Aretha Brown delivered an impassioned speech at the Invasion Day Rally in Melbourne, fighting to make Indigenous history education mainstream. Her delivery and ideas led her to be elected as Prime Minister of the National Indigenous Youth Parliament, the youngest ever person — and the first woman — to hold this position. An accomplished artist, Brown is currently studying painting at the Victorian College of the Arts.

‘I wanted what we all want: everything. We want a mate who feels like family and a lover who is exotic, surprising. We want to be youthful adventurers and middle-aged mothers. We want intimacy and autonomy, safety and stimulation, reassurance and novelty, coziness and thrills. But we can’t have it all.’

While Ariel Levy’s writing effortlessly moves between hulking subjects like sex, love and loss, her most familiar theme is freedom. From her bestselling debut, Female Chauvinist Pigs, which chronicled the rise of raunch culture, to her National Magazine Award- winning piece ‘Thanksgiving in Mongolia’ in the New Yorker (where she’s been a staff writer since 2008), Levy’s work explores and subverts expectations around what a woman’s life should look like. These intentions were crystalised in her 2017 memoir, The Rules Do Not Apply.

‘I think if we’re talking about popular feminism’s inclusion of trans and gender-diverse people, non-binary people, we’re not even scratching the surface.’

Bhenji Ra is an interdisciplinary artist. Her practice combines dance, choreography, video, installation and club events. She is the Mother of ‘Slé’, a young, Western Sydney-based Vogue house, where she hosts events and Balls at the intersection of community and performance.

Ra’s work is often concerned with the dissection of cultural theory and identity, centralising her own personal histories as a tool to reframe performance. Collaboration and consultation are key to her work, and the voices of her own community remain central to her critical practice.

‘I’m not your mother, I’m not your bitch.’

Since her debut album Sometimes I Sit And Think, And Sometimes I Just Sit, Courtney Barnett has been celebrated as one of the most distinctive and compelling voices in rock, an artist who mixes insightful observations with devastating self-assessment. Her second solo record, Tell Me How You Really Feel, was released in 2018; a profoundly realised and politically astute rock-record which had both the Sunday Times and Rolling Stone hailing her as the ‘voice of a generation’.

She is the first female artist ever to win the ARIA for Best Rock Artist (she’s won five ARIAs now), she was APRA’s Australian Songwriter Of The Year in 2016. Barnett has also received the Australian Music Prize and Triple J’s Australian Album of the Year. In 2015 she was nominated for a Grammy Award. Barnett is the founder and owner of Milk! Records.

Professor Clare Wright OAM is an award-winning historian, author, broadcaster, podcaster and public commentator who has worked in politics, academia and the media.
Clare ...

'Sometimes, there can be a slightly condescending assumption that anything unlikable about a female character is a mistake, as if they’re a contestant in a beauty pageant and have to seem charming and upbeat all the time.'

Curtis Sittenfeld is the bestselling author of five novels – the cult-classic Prep, The Man of My Dreams, American Wife, Sisterland and Eligible – and one story collection, You Think It, I’ll Say It.

Her books have been selected by the New York Times, Time, Entertainment Weekly and People for their ‘Ten Best Books of the Year’ lists, optioned for television and film, and translated into 30 languages. Her short stories have appeared in the New Yorker, the Washington Post, and Esquire, and her non-fiction has appeared in the New York Times, Time, Vanity Fair, the Atlantic, Slate, and on This American Life.

PLAYLIST

Writing

• Jane Mayer's journalism, including her books Dark Money (Doubleday) and Strange Justice (Graymalkin Media)
• Alice Munro's short stories, especially Open Secrets (Penguin Random House)
• A Lucky Man by Jamel Brinkley (Serpent's Tail)
• Good Talk by Mira Jacob (One World)
• Make Your Home Among Strangers (fiction; Picador) and My Time Among the Whites (essays; Picador) by Jennine Capó Crucet

TV

• Queer Eye
• Shrill
• Crashing

Music

• Brandi Carlile

'Let me remind any women of any generation still worried by the tag ... feminism is about equality, political equality, economic equality, cultural equality, personal equality, social equality. That’s it, it’s as simple as that.'

Fran Kelly is one of Australia’s leading political interviewers and commentators. She has earned a reputation as an intelligent, informed and balanced journalist who has been a key contributor to the nation’s political and social debates for the past 25 years. In that time she’s been the ABC’s Europe Correspondent based in London, the political editor for The 7.30 Report and the political correspondent for the prestigious AM program. 

Fran is the Presenter of ABC RN Breakfast,  Australia’s leading national morning current affairs radio show.

She is currently hosting the  political panel programme, Insiders, on ABC TV on Sunday mornings.

‘I see an unashamedly feminist country where the patriarchy is dismantled, where access to abortion is unambiguously legal, where the safety of women is of the utmost importance and violence against women is confronted as the crisis that it is.’

Mehreen Faruqi is the Greens’ Senator for New South Wales, and the first Muslim woman to become senator in Australia. Faruqi has been involved in feminist and anti-racist activism throughout her life. She introduced the first ever bill to decriminalise abortion while an MP in New South Wales Parliament and won the closure of pregnancy discrimination loopholes. Faruqi’s work for reproductive rights was recognised with the feminist Edna Ryan Grand Stirrer award in 2017 ‘for inciting others to challenge the status quo’. Her ‘Love Letters to Mehreen’ series has highlighted the online harassment, bullying and toxicity experienced by women of colour in public life.

‘We can’t get away from the fact that women with disabilities are vulnerable. Society is slowly changing, but as much as people hate hearing it women are already on the back foot and then you add a disability ... we’re so much further behind.’

Nicole Lee is a family violence survivor and passionate public advocate who has played a major role through her appointment to Victim Survivors’ Advisory Council. Lee, who also uses a wheelchair, focuses on family violence perpetrated against those who have a disability, or who depend on carers or family members for support. After suffering a decade of abuse at the hands of her former husband, Lee now uses her lived experience of family violence to speak out for those who don’t yet have a voice.

‘As we commit to each other to build this movement of resistance and liberation, no one can be an afterthought.’

Raquel Willis is a Black queer transgender activist, writer and speaker dedicated to inspiring and elevating marginalized individuals, particularly transgender women of color. She is currently the Executive Editor of Out Magazine. In 2018, she was named a Jack Jones Literary Arts Sylvia Rivera Fellow. She's also a part of Echoing Ida, a national Black women and nonbinary writers' collective. She is a former National Organizer for Transgender Law Center.

In 2018, she was also named an Open Society Foundations Soros Equality Fellow. She launched Black Trans Circles, a project focused on developing the leadership of Black trans women in the South and Midwest by creating healing justice spaces to work through oppression-based trauma, incubating community organizing efforts to address anti-trans murder and violence and elevating nuanced narratives through a national storytelling campaign.

Born and raised in Augusta, GA, Raquel Willis has a loving mother who supports her in all of the work that she does. She is also the youngest child in her family and has a sister, a brother, two nieces and three nephews. She credits the passing of her late father as the catalyst for her transition and career. Raquel is a thought leader on gender, race and intersectionality.