Acoustic Mirrors: An Afternoon of Poetry and Music

Authors

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  Ana Svetel

  Ana Svetel is a writer, poet, and cultural anthropologist from Slovenia, whose work moves between academic and artistic exploration. She is an Assistant Professor at the University of Ljubljana, researching human–environment relations in Alpine and Arctic regions.
  
  She has published two poetry collections and two books of short prose, all shortlisted for major national literary awards. Her most recent book, the cycle of five novellas Steklene stene (Glass Walls), received the Slovenian Literary Critics’ Award in 2025, the same year she was awarded the Central European Initiative Prize for Young Authors.
  
  She also regularly contributes essays and columns to various media.
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  Dženana Vucic

  Dženana Vucic is a Bosnian–Australian writer and editor based in Berlin. Her poems have been shortlisted for numerous prizes and her writing has been widely published, including in Australian Book Review, Australian Poetry Journal, Crikey, Kill Your Darlings, Meanjin, Overland, Sydney Review of Books and elsewhere.
  
  Dženana is a Fiction Editor at SAND Journal and the Reviews Editor at Cordite Poetry Review. Her debut poetry collection, after war, is out with UQP in 2026.
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  Genevieve Fry

  Genevieve Fry is an interdisciplinary artist based in Narrm. Interested in exploratory music and improvisation drawing inspiration from the natural world, their soundscapes encourage an inward journey touching on deep time, memory and sense of place.
  
  Genevieve has collaborated on a number of projects with writers including 'Whelk', a wavy ambient project with Manisha Anjali and 'Lotus Web' led by writer Panda Wong and musician Hannah Wu.
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  Hannah Wu

  Hannah Wu is a writer and musician from Aotearoa, studying on unceded Wurundjeri land. She makes music under the moniker, 'Blood Lotus', and forms one half of 'Lotus Threads', a collaborative poetry and music project with poet, Panda Wong.
  
  Her writing has been published with or is forthcoming with Liminal Magazine, Pantera Press, Cordite Poetry Review, Australian Poetry Journal, un Magazine, Debris Magazine, Loom Literary Journal, Voiceworks and others.
  
  She was shortlisted for the Liminal Nonfiction Prize, longlisted for the Liminal Fiction Prize, was a recipient of The University of Melbourne Global Scholars Award and The Scroggin Prize for Creative Writing from the University of Melbourne. 
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  May Zeng

  May Zeng is a Naarm-based violinist, curator and survivor with a focus on new experimental music and interdisciplinary practices. Being continuously enthralled by music yet disillusioned by the vast and immense harm done in its name, May's work and commissions are socially-conscious and narrative-based with the aim of challenging institutional violence in classical music and beyond.
  
  Her collaborations with composers, sound and visual artists have led to numerous premieres in Australia and abroad. Together with composer-writer Xiaole Zhan (詹小乐), their duo DUSK MOUTH 名 creates new music that amplifies unheard voices, blending text, sound and their shared Chinese heritage.
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  Panda Wong

  Panda Wong is a poet amd editor living in Naarm. She is also one-half of the music/poetry project lotus threads, as well as its expanded project lotus web. With a focus on collaboration, she works across sound, film, performance, and digital spaces to explore ecological grief, non-human personhood and the ways in which we are connected. Her chapbook angel wings dumpster fire was published by Puncher & Wattman in 2022, followed shortly by her debut poetry EP, salmon cannon me into the abyss. She also co-edited Best of Australian Poems 2023 and is a 2026 The Next Chapter fellow.
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  Xiaole Zhan (詹小乐)

  Xiaole Zhan (詹小乐) is a Chinese-Aotearoa writer and composer based in Naarm. Their work features in Auckland University Press’s New Poets 11. They are a 2025 Creative New Zealand Fellowship recipient, a 2025 Red Room Poetry Varuna Fellowship recipient, the 2024 Kat Muscat Fellow, as well as the winner of the 2023 Kill Your Darlings Non-Fiction Prize and 2023 Landfall Young Writers' Essay Prize. Their name in Chinese means ‘Little Happy’, but can also be read as ‘Little Music’.
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  Yirga Gelaw Woldeyes

  Yirga Gelaw Woldeyes is a poet and storyteller from the historic town of Lalibela, Ethiopia. His bilingual memoir Trials of Hope/የተስፋ ፈተና won the 2024 Hungerford Award, and tells his life story from boy shepherd to human rights academic. Drawing on ancient Ethiopian traditions and African epistemologies, his work challenges colonial erasures and celebrates communal values. His Amharic poetry was published in the solo collection የተራሮች ጩኸት (The Cry of Mountains), and has been performed widely on stage and radio in Ethiopia. His English stories have appeared in Westerly, Stories of Perth and Ways of Being Here. He currently lives in Boorloo/Perth, where he is the Director of the Centre for Human Rights Education at Curtin University.
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  Ender Başkan

  Ender Başkan is a Naarm/Melbourne-based poet, novelist, small-press publisher and bookseller. The winner of the 2021 Overland Judith Wright Poetry Prize, his poems have been published in HEAT, Meanjin, Cordite, Loom, unMagazine, Unusual Work and Best of Australian Poems.
  
  He has also published a novel, A Portrait of Alice as a Young Man. His debut poetry collection Two Hundred Million Musketeers, published by Giramondo, was shortlisted for the 2026 Victorian Premiers Literary Award.