Auslan Interpreted
Mama Alto is a jazz singer, cabaret artiste and gender transcendent diva. She is a transgender and queer person of colour who works with the radical potential of storytelling, strength in softness and power in vulnerability. In addition to her excellence as a performing artist, she is a writer of intelligence and sensitivity.
She has performed original spoken word and pieces of new writing for Melbourne Writers Festival, Queerstories, Emerging Writers' Festival and Word In Hand. Her writing has been published in the Age, Archer Magazine, Querelle 2018, the Music, and Melbourne Recital Centre's Soundescapes, and she has contributed chapters to Queerstories (ed. Maeve Marsden, Hachette Australia 2018) and Living & Loving in Diversity (ed. Maria Pallotta-Chiarolli, Wakefield Press and AGMC 2019).
In 2019, she was one of the playwrights selected for the MTC's Cyber Electric workshop and readings series. Her Wheeler Centre Hot Desk Fellowship will build upon the research and writing work on the concept of the diva which she undertook as one of the 2019 Creators supported by Creative Victoria's Creators Fund.
Claire G. Coleman is a Noongar woman whose family have belonged to the south coast of Western Australia since long before history started being recorded. Claire writes fiction, essays, poetry and art writing while either living in Naarm (Melbourne) or on the road. During an extended circuit of the continent she wrote a novel, Terra Nullius, which won the black&write! Indigenous Writing Fellowship and was listed for eight awards including a shortlisting for The Stella Prize. Lies, Damned Lies is her first full length work of non-fiction.
William Yang is a writer and visual artist.
William Yang was born in North Queensland, Australia. He moved to Sydney in 1969 and worked as a freelance photographer documenting Sydney’s social life which included the glamorous, celebrity set and the hedonistic, sub-cultural, gay community
In 1989 he integrated his skills as a writer and a visual artist. He began to perform monologues with slide projection in the theatre. These slide shows have become the main expression of his work. They tell personal stories and explore issues of identity. He has done ten full-length works and they have toured the world.
William’s current work is photo-based and uses performance, gallery exhibition and video. He conducts workshops in story telling, and is helping other people tell their story.
Jonathan Van Ness is an Emmy-nominated television personality, New York Times best-selling author, podcaster, and hairstylist to the stars. He stars on Netflix’s Emmy Award-winning reboot series Queer Eye, and he is the host and executive producer of the Netflix series Getting Curious with Jonathan Van Ness, based on Jonathan’s popular podcast of the same name. In 2020, Jonathan launched JVN, a clean and sustainable haircare line that sees all beauty, serves all beauty, and honors the uniqueness in each of us.