Victorian Poetry Month Gala 2023

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 O... Read more

Manisha Anjali is the author of Naag Mountain (Giramondo, 2024). She is the founder of Neptune, a research and documentation platform for dreams, visions and hallucinations. Manisha was a recipient of BLINDSIDE’s Regional Arts & Research Residency at Mooramong, a Writer-in-Residence at Incendi... Read more

Emilie Zoey Baker is an award-winning poet, teacher and spoken-word performer who has toured internationally. She was a fellow at the State Library of Victoria, coordinator of the Australian National Slam, and was core faculty for the spoken word program at Canada’s Banff Centre. She teaches i... Read more

The novelist, Andrea Goldsmith, met Dorothy Porter in 1992 on the Victorian Women’s Writers’ Train. They were together until Dorothy’s death in December, 2008. Both writers were short-listed for the 2003 Miles Franklin award, Andrea for her fourth novel, The Prosperous Thief, and Dorothy f... Read more

Eloise Grills is a writer and visual artist living on Dja Dja Wurrung land. Her collection of illustrated nonfiction, big beautiful female theory, was shortlisted for the 2023 Stella Prize and the Indie Book Award for Illustrated Nonfiction.

Maya Hodge is a Lardil and Yangkaal emerging writer and curator based on the lands of the Kulin Nation. Her practice is dedicated to disrupting colonial narratives and centering First Nations storytelling and autonomy. Maya’s writing and poetry have been published by Australian Poetry, Kill Your D... Read more

Kevin Jared Hosein is a Caribbean novelist. He was named overall winner of the Commonwealth Short Story Prize in 2018, and was the Caribbean regional winner in 2015. He has published two books: The Repenters and The Beast of Kukuyo. The latter received a CODE Burt Award for Caribbean Young Adult L... Read more

Andy Jackson is a poet and creative writing teacher and mentor, was awarded the inaugural Writing the Future of Health Fellowship, and is a Writers Victoria Patron. He has featured at literary events and arts festivals in Ireland, India, the USA and across Australia, including Melbourne Writers Fest... Read more

Erik Jensen is an award-winning journalist, biographer, poet and screenwriter. He is the founding editor of The Saturday Paper and editor-in-chief of Schwartz Media. He is the author of Acute Misfortune: The Life and Death of Adam Cullen, On Kate Jennings and The Prosperity Gospel. His first collect... Read more

A gifted composer celebrated for their dexterity across multiple instruments and for composition that is complex and structurally adventurous. In 2014, having already released several of their own albums under the name Pikelet, Morris co-founded LISTEN, an advocacy group focused on creating discours... Read more

Izzy Roberts-Orr is a poet, writer, broadcaster and arts worker based on Taungurung Country, and Digital Producer at Red Room Poetry. Izzy is a 2020-2021 recipient of the Australia Council Marten Bequest Scholarship for Poetry, and is currently completing a book of elegiac poetry, Raw Salt. ... Read more

Jason Steger is books editor at The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald.

Jessica Wilkinson has published three poetic biographies, most recently Music Made Visible: A Biography of George Balanchine (Vagabond, 2019). She is working on a new manuscript of biographical poems on Mirka Mora. Jessica is the founding editor of Rabbit: a journal for nonfiction poetry and th... Read more