Writing Blak Legacies: A First Nations Literature Gala

Evelyn Araluen is a poet, researcher and co-editor of Overland Literary Journal. Her widely published criticism, fiction and poetry has been awarded the Nakata Brophy Prize for Young Indigenous Writers, the Judith Wright Poetry Prize, a Wheeler Centre Next Chapter Fellowship, and a Neilma Sidney Li... Read more

Larissa Behrendt AO is the Laureate Fellow at Jumbunna Research, UTS. She is an award winning author and filmmaker and the host of Speaking Out on ABC Radio.

Tony Birch holds the Boisbouvier Chair in Australian Literature at Melbourne University. He is the author of three novels, five short fiction collections, and two poetry books. In 2023 he will release a new novel, Women and Children. ... Read more

Celebrated Indigenous singer-songwriter Kev Carmody was born in 1946 to an Irish-Australian father and Aboriginal mother. Carmody is particularly well-known for co-writing From Little Things Big Things Grow with Paul Kelly in 1991, which shares the story of the fight for land rights by the Gurindji ... Read more

Zerene has always been taught by her mother to stand tall and proud, not only as a Woman, but as a Blak Queer Woman. As an Activist, Actor, Educator and Creative Zerene has fought long and hard to ensure all voices, stories and truths are told. Zerene Jaadwa is loud, proud and deadly. This can intim... Read more

Jeanine Leane belongs to the Wiradjuri people from the Murrumbidgee River in south west NSW. She is a writer poet and teacher whose prose, essays and poetry have been published widely in Australia and abroad. She is the editor of Guwayu – for all times: A collection of First Nations Poetry and cur... Read more

Jenna Lee is a Gulumerridjin (Larrakia), Wardaman and KarraJarri Saltwater woman with mixed Japanese, Chinese, Filipino and Anglo-Australian ancestry. Using art to explore and celebrate her many overlapping identities, Lee works across sculpture, installation, and body adornment. She also works with... Read more

Nardi Simpson is a Yuwaalaraay storyteller from north west NSW freshwater floodplains. She is founding member of Indigenous band Stiff Gins and an accomplished composer, playwright, educator and public speaker. Her debut novel Song of the Crocodile was long listed for the 2020 Stella Prize, Miles Fr... Read more

Yasmin Smith is an editor, writer and poet of South Sea Islander, Northern Cheyenne, Kabi Kabi and English heritage. Beginning her publishing career at the national black&write! Indigenous Writing and Editing Project, she has worked across literary fiction, non-fiction, children’s books and po... Read more

Ellen van Neerven is an award-winning writer of Mununjali Yugambeh (South East Queensland) and Dutch heritage. They write fiction, poetry, plays and non-fiction. Ellen’s first book, Heat and Light, was the recipient of the David Unaipon Award, the Dobbie Literary Award and the NSW Premier’s Lit... Read more

Aged twenty-one Archie Weller won runner-up in the inaugural Vogel Bread prize with The Day of the Dog, written in just six weeks and later he worked on the film script of what became the movie Blackfellahs based on his book. But he had been writing short stories and poetry since the age of thirteen... Read more

Alison Whittaker is a Gomeroi multitasker. Between 2017–2018, she was a Fulbright scholar at Harvard Law School, where she was named the Dean’s Scholar in Race, Gender and Criminal Law. Alison is a Senior Researcher at the Jumbunna Institute at UTS. Her debut poetry collection, Lemons in the Ch... Read more

Tara June Winch is a Wiradjuri author, born in Australia in 1983 and based in France. Her first novel, Swallow the Air, was critically acclaimed and she was named a Sydney Morning Herald Best Young Australian Novelist, and has won numerous literary awards. A tenth anniversary edition was publishe... Read more