Opening Night: Visions & Revisions

Authors

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  Anita Heiss

  Anita Heiss (Wiradyuri Nation) is an internationally published author of over 20 books across genres.
  
  Her best-selling novel Tiddas was adapted for the stage and premiered at the Brisbane Festival in 2022. Her novel Barbed Wire and Cherry Blossoms was longlisted for the Dublin International Literary Prize.
  Bila Yarrudhanggalangdhuray won the 2022 NSW Premier’s Literary Prize for Indigenous Writing, and was shortlisted for the 2021 HNSA ARA Historical Novel.
  
  Anita is an Ambassador for the Indigenous Literacy Foundation and Professor of Communications at the University of Queensland. She is also Publisher at Large for Bundyi Publishing, a First Nations imprint with Simon & Schuster Australia.
  
  Anita's curated events are:

  • Mother Tongue: Writing Matriarchies
  • Centring First Nations Knowledge
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  Ariana Reines

  Ariana Reines is an award-winning poet, Obie-winning playwright, performing artist, and translator. Her recent books include The Rose, Wave of Blood, and A Sand Book, winner of the Kingsley Tufts Prize and longlisted for the National Book Award.
  
  Reines has created theatre and performance for Performance Space New York, The Whitney Museum, Works+Process at The Guggenheim, Stuart Shave / Modern Art, Le Mouvement Biel/Bienne, the Cherry Lane Theatre, and many others, and has given thousands of readings and master classes around the world.
  
  Her play Telephone has been been adapted and reimagined across the United States and Europe since 2009. In 2020, while a Divinity student at Harvard, Reines created Invisible College, a study hall for poetry, sacred texts, and the arts.
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  Daniel James

  Daniel is a Yorta Yorta man Melbourne based writer and broadcaster. He is the winner of the 2018 Horne Prize for his essay, Ten More Days. He also hosts The Mission on 3RRR FM. Daniel is the co-host of the 7am Podcast for Solstice media and is a contributor to the IndigenousX, SBS, Crikey, the Age/Sydney Morning Herald and The Guardian.
  
  Daniel’s work explores notions of empathy, intergenerational trauma, hidden history and the political landscape that continues to shape the lives of Aboriginal people across the country. He is currently working on his first book with Affirm Press and was creative lead for Yoorrook Justice Commission’s report Truth Be Told and has recently been assisting the First Peoples’ Assembly of Victoria with the Treaty process. He co-administers The Spencer Street End, with friend Jacinta Parsons.
  
  Daniel's curated event is:

  • Making the Victorian Treaty
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  Don Watson

  Don Watson is the author of many acclaimed books, including Caledonia Australis, Recollections of a Bleeding Heart, American Journeys, The Bush, Watsonia, and The Shortest History of the United States of America.
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  Evelyn Araluen

  Evelyn Araluen is a Goorie and Koori poet, editor and educator. Her debut poetry collection DROPBEAR won the 2022 Stella Prize, and her second collection, THE ROT, was nominated for the 2026 Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards for Poetry and Indigenous Writing.
  
  She works across the Wilin Centre for Indigenous Arts and Cultural Development, Overland Literary Journal, and the Institute of Postcolonial Studies.
  
  Evelyn's curated events are:
  
  Reimagining Resistance Beyond Colonies
  
  Burial Grounds: Indigenous Perspectives on Horror
  
  Sintering: An Evening of Indigenous Brilliance
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  Jessica Johns

  Jessica Johns is a queer nehiyaw aunty and a member of Sucker Creek First Nation. She is an interdisciplinary artist and award-winning writer whose debut novel, Bad Cree, was a Canada Reads finalist and won the WGA Fiction Prize, Alex Award, and MacEwan Book of the Year Prize.
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  Omar Musa

  Omar Musa is an author, visual artist and poet from Queanbeyan, Australia. He has released two novels, four books of poetry, five hip-hop records and the acclaimed one-man play. His work has appeared in The Best Australian Stories and The Best of Australian Poems. His debut novel, Here Come the Dogs, was long-listed for the International Dublin Literary Award and the Miles Franklin Award. He was named one of The Sydney Morning Herald’s Young Novelists of the Year in 2015.
  
  His most recent novel is Fierceland, and his short story collection The Vape Lord of Queanbeyan comes out in July.
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  Sophia Brous

  Sophia Brous is a cross-disciplinary artist, performer and curator based in New York and Melbourne. Her practice draws on broad interests in contemporary and formal  music, devised performance, multidisciplinary collaboration and improvisation. She is a resident artist of The Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), National Sawdust and The Watermill Center, and was Curator at Large of Pioneer Works and Artistic Associate of the Arts Centre Melbourne, where she founded Supersense: Festival of the Ecstatic in 2015.

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