Write Up Melbourne 2020

Write Up is for anyone who has felt limited by their gender and wants to understand how language can be used to liberate and empower. It is an inclusive event open to all teens.

Over the day, authors, journalists, activists, artists, poets and other creative thinkers will share the ways they have used their writing to define their identities and shape the world around them. The program explores the relationship between language, gender and power, and the effects of unconscious bias on our sense of self. Write Up gives participants the opportunity to discover their own creative voice, equipping them with the skills and the confidence to use it.

To be held at Melbourne Museum on Wednesday 25 March, Write Up Melbourne will feature presentations, panels and hands-on workshops by a range of inspiring writers.

Date
Wednesday 25 March 2020

Location
Melbourne Museum

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Artists

Manisha Anjali

Manisha Anjali is a writer and artist. She is the author of Electric Lotus (IRL Press, 2019). Manisha has exhibited at Melbourne Writers Festival, Queensland Poetry Festival, Emerging Writers Festival, Digital Writers Festival, c3 contemporary art space, Bus Projects and SEVENTH Gallery. She was a recipient of BLINDSIDE’s Regional Arts Residency, a Writer-in-Residence at Incendium Radical Library and a Hot Desk Fellow at The Wheeler Centre. Manisha is the producer of Neptune: a dream archive and Poetry Editor at The Lifted Brow.

Vidya Rajan

Vidya Rajan is an award-winning writer, comedian, and performance-maker working mainly across television and theatre. She makes work that is often sharply hilarious, formally inventive, and ethically probing . She has recently worked with ABC Comedy, Metroarts, EWF, The Blue Room Theatre, Melbourne Festival, Audible, Griffin, Theatreworks, and is a 2018 recipient of Screen Australia’s Developing the Developer initiative. She is a current writer in residence at the Malthouse Theatre making new work. You can follow her at vidyasrajan.com or on twitter.com/vidyarrrr

Maria Lewis

Maria Lewis is a best-selling author, screenwriter and journalist. Starting as a police reporter at the age of sixteen, her work on pop culture has been seen on SBS Viceland’s The Feed and in print for publications such as The Guardian, Penthouse, New York Post and Empire Magazine. Winner of the Aurealis Award for Best Fantasy Novel 2019 for her fourth book The Witch Who Courted Death, her latest novel The Wailing Woman follows the plight of a teenage banshee and continues her globally published Supernatural Sisters series. Her debut novel, Who’s Afraid?, is currently being adapted for television.

Mandy Ord

Mandy Ord is a Melbourne based illustrator and cartoonist with a long history of self publishing as well as having a number of published books including Brickdog & OtherStories with Pluto Press, NY and Rooftops with Finlay Lloyd, Galapogos with Glom Press and Sensitive Creatures with Allen & Unwin. and When One Person Dies The Whole World Is Over with Brow Books. In 2012 Sensitive Creatures received a White Ravens award at the Bologna Book Fair. Mandy’s illustrated children’s book Chalk Boy, published by Allen &Unwin and written by Margaret Wild, was shortlisted in 2019 by the Children’s Book Council of Australia and her latest book When One Person Dies the Whole World is Over published by Brow Books has been longlisted for the Stella Prize.

Santilla Chingaipe

Santilla Chingaipe is an award-winning journalist and filmmaker based in Melbourne. Her work explores migration, cultural identities and politics. She was awarded a State Library of Victoria Fellowship to research African migration to Australia pre-federation. She reports regularly for The Saturday Paper and is a member of the federal government’s advisory group on Australia-Africa relations. Her film credits include the landmark SBS documentary, DATE MY RACE. She wrote and directed, BLACK AS ME and her latest documentary series THIRD CULTURE KIDS is currently streaming on ABC iView. In 2019, Santilla was recognised at the United Nations as one of the most influential people of African descent.

Hella Ibrahim

Hella Ibrahim is an editor and the founder of Djed Press, an online publication that provides a paid platform for creators of colour. Currently, she’s working on the First Nations and POC Writers Count research project, is on the EWF20 Program Advisory Committee, and will be MCing the 2020 Molly Hadfield Social Justice Oration. She’s been part of various festivals, events and workshops for Melbourne Writers Festival, Emerging Writers Festival, National Young Writers Festival, FCAC’s West Writers Forum, SPN’s Independent Publishing Conference, The Wheeler Centre, Express Media, Voiceworks, Melbourne City of Literature, Darebin City Council and Brimbank City Council.

You can follow Djed on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Evelyn Araluen

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, and a Wheeler Centre Next Chapter Fellowship. Her debut poetry collection Dropbear is forthcoming with Brow Books in 2020. Born and raised in Dharug country, she is a descendant of the Bundjalung nation.

Isobel Morphy-Walsh

Isobel Morphy-Walsh, a proud Nirim Baluk Woman from the Taun Wurrung (Taungurung) people. She is a lover of anecdote, an artist, an activist, an educator, a singer, a storyteller and weaver. Isobel has spent her life working with her community and culture with a particular emphasis on history, culture, country and its importance today. Her artwork can be found in a state collection, over walls she passes or on the bodies of people she knows. Many a yarn, spoken word and song can be heard in her presence. For the past few years Isobel has earned her bread and butter by working with Museums Victoria focusing on First Peoples cultures, communities, histories and engagement. She has worked to deliver many major events and compressive education suites, and engaged in curatorial work. Her current role as First Peoples Curator and Story shaper looks into addressing the need to decolonize, particularly through the treatment and interpretation of objects and the communities they come from, and approaches taken in development.