Event and Ticketing Details
Dates & Times
Monday 29 November
6:30 PM - 7:30 PM
After another year of the best laid plans going awry, we’re thrilled to have our second cohort of Hot Desk Fellows back in action. They are working on projects ranging from screenplays to comics, fiction, non-fiction and poetry. As their fellowships draw to a close, join us at The Moat for our last The Next Big Thing event of the year. We’ll hear new writing from Diane Vu, Ariel Ries, Ruby Hillsmith, Allee Richards and Danny Silva Soberano.
The Wheeler Centre Hot Desk Fellowships are supported by the Readings Foundation and Just Pretending theatre group
The online bookseller for this event is Readings
You must have a pre-booked ticket to attend in person. On arrival, you will need to register your details through the Victorian Government QR code service using your smartphone, and adhere to the venue’s conditions of entry. Please note, in line with current public health orders, all guests are required to be double vaccinated against COVID-19 in order to visit The Moat. Guests must show proof of their vaccination status upon arrival.
Featuring
Ariel Slamet Ries
Ariel Slamet Ries is an eggplant and/or human residing on unceded Boon Wurrung and Wurundjeri lands. After studying animation in Denmark for four years they lost their degree in the post and unceremoniously bumbled into making comics for a living. Their first two major publications, Witchy and Cry Wolf Girl, are multi-award nominated, and most notably received the 2020 Ignatz Awards for Outstanding Online Comic and Outstanding Comic, respectively.
Ariel is passionate about creating speculative fiction centering marginalised folks, and is currently writing a YA sci-fi romance formulated 13 years prior in a fit of pubescent yearning.
Darlene Silva Soberano
Darlene Silva Soberano is a poet. Their work has appeared in Mascara Literary Review, Australian Poetry and Cordite Poetry Review, among other places. They are currently a poetry editor for Voiceworks.
Ruby Hillsmith
Ruby Hillsmith is a writer, editor and poet based in Melbourne, on Wurundjeri land. In 2019, Ruby was Co-Editor-in-Chief of Visible Ink journal and interned at Arts Access Victoria. Ruby’s recent writing has appeared in the Australian Poetry Journal, Cordite Poetry Review, Sick Leave Journal and Suspiria. She aims to produce work that is the literary equivalent of the smiling imp emoji. Her writing can be found at @rubyhillsmith on Instagram.
Diane Vu
Diane is an ex production designer and stylist turned screenwriter. Sick of having too many opinions and not enough power to voice them (as well as being paid once for doing two completely different jobs), she decided to redirect her energies into developing the stories herself. She now much prefers spending her days battling writer’s block, ruinous perfectionism and unwavering imposter syndrome as well as binge watching television and reframing it as being 'driven', and ‘ambitious’.
Diane graduated from a Master of Screenwriting at the VCA in 2020 and since then has written, produced and acted in a short film called Mark Targets that is currently in post production. Drawn to truthful and modern representations of the minority experience, she rejects depressing poverty porn and embraces realistic tragicomedy. She explores issues such as poverty, abuse, shame, addiction and inherited trauma. It’s funny though, she promises.
Allee Richards
Allee Richards is a theatremaker and fiction writer from Melbourne. Her short stories have been published by Kill Your Darlings, Overland and Black Inc. Her debut novel, Small Joys of Real Life, was shortlisted for the 2020 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for an Unpublished Manuscript, and is now out with Hachette.
Lauren Taylor
Lauren is the Wheeler Centre’s Senior Programme and Podcast Producer.
She has worked extensively across Melbourne’s arts and cultural sector as a creative producer, programmer, broadcaster, podcaster, facilitator and media maker with organisations including Triple R, Monash University Performing Arts Centres, MPavilion, Noisy Ritual and ABC Radio.
Lauren was previously the Events Producer and a member of the Programming and Content team at one of Australia’s most influential community radio stations Triple R, managing the station’s outside broadcasts and live-to-airs from the Triple R Performance Space.
She has facilitated in-conversation events for MPavilion, Melbourne Writers Festival, Vivid Live, Melbourne Festival, MIFF, Melbourne Music Week, BIGSOUND and Sugar Mountain Festival and was also commissioned by MPavilion and the Robin Boyd Foundation to produce and co-host their Walsh Street Music Program podcast series.
Always searching for the new and the next, Lauren shares her latest discoveries each week as a presenter on Triple R’s Thursday drive program Breaking & Entering. The program features important new releases, in depth interviews with artists and follows critical conversations in a rapidly changing landscape.
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