Speaker bios
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Ali Cobby Eckermann
Ali Cobby Eckermann’s first collection, little bit long time, launched her literary career in 2009. In 2013 Ali toured Ireland as Australian Poetry Ambassador and won the Kenneth Slessor Prize and Book of The Year (NSW) for Ruby Moonlight, a massacre verse novel. In 2014 Ali was the inaugural recipient of the Tungkunungka Pintyanthi Fellowship at Adelaide Writers Week and was the first Aboriginal Australian writer to attend the International Writing Program at University of Iowa. In 2017 Ali received a Windham Campbell Award for Poetry from Yale University USA. She was awarded a Literature Fellowship by the Australian Council for the Arts in 2018. In 2019 Ali was awarded the prestigious Civitella Ranieri Fellowship in Italy. Photo credit Adrian Cook.
Alice Bishop
Alice Bishop is a writer from Christmas Hills, Victoria. Her first collection of short fiction, A Constant Hum, was published in July 2019 by Text Publishing and was recently shortlisted for the 2019 Readings Prize for New Australian Fiction. Her social media links are Twitter: @BishopAlice; IG: @alicebishop; Website: alicebishop.site.
Photo credit: Leon Bishop
Alice Robinson
Alice Robinson has a PhD in Creative Writing from Victoria University. She is the author of two novels: Anchor Point, longlisted for the Stella Prize and the Indie Book Awards in 2015 and The Glad Shout, which has just been shortlisted for the Readings Prize for New Australian Fiction. Twitter: @critrature Instagram: @ciaoalicerobinson.
Photo credit: Jessica Tremp
Alison Evans
Alison Evans is the author of Ida, which won the People’s Choice Award at the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards 2017. Their second novel, Highway Bodies, was published earlier this year and they are a contributor to new anthology Kindred: 12 Queer #LoveOzYA Stories. They are based in Melbourne.
Astrid Scholte
Raised on a diet of Spielberg, Lucas and Disney, Astrid Scholte knew she wanted to be surrounded by all things fantastical from a young age. She’s spent the last ten years working in film, animation and television as both an artist and manager. Career highlights include working on James Cameron’s Avatar, Steven Spielberg’s The Adventures of Tintin and George Miller’s Happy Feet Two. She lives in Melbourne, Australia, with her fiancé and two cats, Lilo and Mickey. Her debut YA novel, Four Dead Queens, was an international bestseller. Her second novel, The Vanishing Deep, will be released on the 3rd of March 2020 with Allen & Unwin and Penguin Random House (USA). You can find her posting about books, cats and Disney on Twitter and Instagram @AstridScholte
Bridget Caldwell
Bridget Caldwell is a Jingili Mudburra writer and editor currently based in Narrm/Birraranga. She works as co-editor for Archer Magazine as well as literary journal The Lifted Brow. She was previously managing editor for Blak Brow, a Black Women’s Collective edition of The Lifted Brow.
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Danielle Binks
Danielle Binks is a Melbourne-based author and literary agent with Jacinta di Mase Management. In 2017, she edited and contributed to Begin, End, Begin: A #LoveOzYA Anthology. Danielle’s debut middle-grade novel is coming out with Hachette Australia next year, titled The Year the Maps Changed.
Ilka Tampke
Ilka Tampke teaches fiction at RMIT University. Her first novel, Skin, was published in eight countries and was nominated for the Voss Literary Prize and the Aurealis Awards in 2016. Her second novel, Songwoman, was published in the UK, Germany and Denmark and was recently shortlisted for the Most Underrated Book Award 2019. Ilka lives on five acres in the Macedon Ranges of Victoria.
Jinghua Qian
Jinghua Qian is a Shanghainese writer living in the Kulin nations, fluent in verse, prose, and sharpening complexities without simplifying them. Whether on the page, stage, or airwaves, Jinghua interrogates the power of unbelonging: as a shapeshifter in a binary-gendered world, as an immigrant in a settler-colonial state, and as the long answer to a short question. They have written on gender, sexuality, and the Chinese diaspora for Sydney Morning Herald, SBS, Overland, Sixth Tone, The Lifted Brow, Popula, and 3CR Community Radio, and published poetry, essays, opinion and non-fiction in a range of Australian and international publications. They're also a staff writer and reviews editor at ArtsHub, Australia's leading independent online resource dedicated to the world of the arts.
Jo Pugh
Jo Pugh is a Fijian-Indian writer, facilitator and artist based in Naarm. They are the Assistant Editor of un Magazine and co-curator of the Dead End Film Festival writing program. Their work has appeared in un Extended, Visible Ink and Dead End Film Festival. Their work explores and centres queerness, brownness and marginalisation.
Laura Elizabeth Woollett
Laura Elizabeth Woollett's short story collection The Love of a Bad Man (Scribe, 2016) was shortlisted for the 2017 Victorian Premier's Literary Award for Fiction and the Ned Kelly Award for Best First Fiction. Her novel Beautiful Revolutionary (Scribe, 2018) is currently on the shortlist for the Prime Minister's Literary Award for Fiction. Her writing has appeared in Elle, New York Magazine, Kill Your Darlings, and others. She lives in Melbourne and is working on her next novel, The Newcomer.
Marisa Wikramanayake
Marisa Wikramanayake is a freelance editor and journalist currently based in Melbourne. They have edited award-winning work for authors such as Jane Rawson, Amanda Jay and Theena Kumaragurunathan. Their journalism work has appeared in the South China Morning Post, SBS, The New Daily and the West Australian. They are the current MEAA Victorian Media Section President.
Melissa Cranenburgh
Melissa Cranenburgh is a writer, broadcaster, editor and educator. She spent more than a decade in senior editing roles, including associate editor and acting editor of The Big Issue, and co-editor of the magazine's annual fiction edition. She now teaches in RMIT's Professional Writing and Editing diploma, and hosts Triple R's flagship weekly book show, Backstory.
Nina Kenwood
Nina Kenwood is a writer who lives in Melbourne.
She won the 2018 Text Prize for her debut young adult novel, It Sounded Better in My Head.
Photo credit Lian Hingee
Rajith Savanadasa
Rajith Savanadasa was born in Colombo, Sri Lanka and now lives in Melbourne. He was named a Best Young Australian Novelist by the Sydney Morning Herald in 2017 for his debut novel, Ruins. Rajith is currently working on a play commissioned by the Malthouse Theatre, and his second novel.
Ruby Hillsmith
Ruby Hillsmith is a poet and non fiction writer. Her work has been published in Cordite Poetry Review, Sick Leave Journal, Honi Soit, Young Writers Showcase and NSW State Library online. She is the co-editor of Visible Ink anthology's 31st edition, Again! Again! Again!, which is being launched at the Odyssey Literary Festival. At the moment she feels compelled to write poetry about her housemate's delinquent pet bunnies, essays about the Australian psychiatric system, and Facebook statuses about Britney Spears.
Sian Prior
Dr Sian Prior is a writer, broadcaster and writing teacher. She has a regular column in the Sunday Age and has had essays published in Meanjin, TEXT journal and the first Women of Letters anthology. In 2014 her first book, Shy: a memoir, was published by Text. She has a PhD in Creative Writing from RMIT University, where she also teaches short courses and in the PWE Associate Degree. She is currently working on her second book of non-fiction. Website: sianprior.com
Tyson Yunkaporta
Dr Tyson Yunkaporta belongs to the Apalech from Western Cape York and is a senior lecturer in Indigenous Knowledges at Deakin University. He has worked with Aboriginal languages and in Indigenous education, and researched oral histories of natural disasters, language, health and cognition. Yunkaporta is also a podcaster, poet and exhibited artist who practices traditional wood carving. His debut book, Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save The World, out now through Text Publishing, shows how patterns, symbols and shapes can make sense of the world. Miles Franklin winner Melissa Lucashenko calls Sand Talk ‘an extraordinary invitation into the world of the Dreaming’.
Photo credit: James Henry
Books
Books by our speakers are available through Readings.