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Wilder Beasts: The Global Scary and Supernatural

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We’ve seen so many werewolves in the last decade that they’re starting to look a little, well, house-trained.

With the recent explosion in popularity of genre fiction, many of the loathsome figures of western mythology and pop culture are losing their scare-factor. Are vampires and zombies still lurking in the shadows of your imagination? Please. You can do so much worse.

Enter Sami Shah, whose fantasy/horror novel, Fire Boy, is set in Karachi, Pakistan, and is riddled with soul-stealing djinns (shape-shifting demon/genies made of smokeless fire) and various other nightmarish creatures from Muslim mythology. Tired of the mainstay preternatural creatures of the western imagination, Sami has chosen to write of the mythical demons that haunted his own childhood. ‘My monsters are not yours,’ he says.

Join Sami and the panel for a broader, spookier discussion of genre fiction from across the world. What creepy spirits lurk under Malaysian, Moroccan and Mexican beds? Do demons and monsters share similar qualities across the world? Or do their powers reflect something of the culture of their origin?

Featuring

Serpil Senelmis

Serpil Senelmis is an Australian broadcaster with Turkish heritage. She is the co-director of Written & Recorded, a content agency. The West Australian Academy of Performing Arts graduate has worked behind the microphone, in front of the camera and behind the scenes of radio and television progr... Read more

Sami Shah

Sami Shah is a multi-award winning comedian, writer, and journalist. Sami is a lecturer in journalism at the University of Melbourne’s Centre for Advancing Journalism, and is the Ambassador-at-Large for PEN Melbourne. ... Read more

Nadia Niaz

Nadia Niaz is a writer and academic who is now mostly from Melbourne, and still a little bit from lots of other places. She has a PhD in Creative Writing and Cultural Studies, and teaches poetry and creative writing to everyone from pre-schoolers to postgraduates. Nadia’s own writing has... Read more

Location

The Wheeler Centre

176 Little Lonsdale Street Melbourne Victoria 3000

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The Wheeler Centre acknowledges the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung people of the Kulin Nation as the Traditional Owners of the land on which the Centre stands. We acknowledge and pay our respects to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and their Elders, past and present, as the custodians of the world’s oldest continuous living culture.