Girls Write Up Sydney 2017 Artists
Check out the GWU Sydney 2017 program
Randa Abdel-Fattah
Randa was a lawyer for ten years and is now an award-winning author of twelve internationally published novels and regular op-ed contributor. She has a PhD in sociology on the topic of Islamophobia in Australia. Her latest novel, When Michael Met Mina, won the Victorian Premier’s Literary award for Young Adults and the People’s Choice award. Randa is working on the film adaptation of her first novel, Does My Head Look Big in This? and also a theatrical adaptation of her novel Where the Streets Had a Name. Randa is keen to use her intervention into popular culture and academia to reshape dominant narratives around racism and multiculturalism.
Evelyn Araluen
Evelyn is a poet, activist, educator, and PhD candidate working with Indigenous literatures at the University of Sydney. She is a founding member of Students Support Aboriginal Communities, a NSW network of grassroots activists. Her poetry and criticism has been published in Overland, Southerly, Cordite, and Best Australian Poems 2016. Born and raised on Dharug country, she has ancestral connections to the Bundjalung nation.
Katie Beckett
Katie is an actor and writer with a passion for storytelling, both for the stage and film. She has recently been nominated for a Green Room Award 2017 for a play she had written Which Way Home, that had a sold out season at Belvoir as part of the Sydney Festival 2017. She is also a winner of the Balnaves Award 2015 and nominee for Green Room Award 2017. Katie was a participant of Kickstart, Next Wave program in 2009 and 2010. She won the Ian Bowie Memorial Award and was shortlisted for the Yvonne Cohen Award for her solo work-in-progress, Coloured Diggers, performed at the Dreaming Festival 2009, Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Coloured Diggers ANZAC Day march in Redfern in 2008, 2009 and 2010. Katie’s film credits include The Leftovers, Cleverman, Talkers, The Marshes, Big cuz and Little J, Oakie’s Adventure, One More Time, Drover’s Boy and Blackground. She was also successful in gaining a place in the Ilbijerri Writers’ Residency.
Emilie Zoey Baker
Emilie is an award-winning Australian poet and spoken-word performer who has toured extensively as a guest of international festivals. She was the winner of the 2010 Berlin International Literature Festival’s Slam!Review. She performs regularly at arts and literature festivals, and has appeared at the Sydney Opera House and TEDx Melbourne. Emilie is a 2014 Fellow at the State Library of Victoria. She has been poet-in-residence for Museums Victoria and coordinator for the National Australian Poetry Slam. She teaches poetry and slam in schools and was on faculty at Canada’s Banff Centre for their 2014 Spoken Word program. Emilie has been published widely and is the author of 14 children’s books.
Stephanie Bendixsen
Stephanie is an Australian video game critic and television presenter – writing and presenting for ABCTV’s Good Game and its companion show for younger gamers, Good Game: Spawn Point. She is known by her gamer tag ‘Hex’. In 2016, Stephanie’s first book for readers aged 8+ was published with Scholastic Australia as part of the PIXEL RAIDERS series.
Tamar Chnorhokian
Tamar is Associate Director of SWEATSHOP: Western Sydney Literacy Movement. She completed a communications degree in writing and publishing at the Western Sydney University in 2004. Her debut novel was The Diet Starts on Monday, and she has also worked as a columnist, journalist and freelance writer. She is the recipient of the 2016 Copyright Agency, WestWords Western Sydney Emerging Writers’ Fellowship. Tamar identifies strongly with her Western Sydney community and her Armenian background.
Winnie Dunn
Winnie is a Tongan writer from Mount Druitt in Western Sydney. Winnie is currently the manager of SWEATSHOP and has recently graduated from a Bachelor of Arts at Western Sydney University. Winnie’s work has been published in The Vocal, The Big Black Thing, Voiceworks and Griffith Review.
Monikka Eliah
Monikka is an emerging Assyrian-Australian writer. She graduated from the University of New South Wales with an Arts degree, having majored in English. She presented at the NSW Writers Centre’s ‘Talking Writing – Refugee Stories’, Studio Stories in Parramatta, and at the Wollongong Writers Festival. She is currently a member of SWEATSHOP and will be participating in National Theatre of Parramatta’s Page to Stage program.
Lorin Elizabeth
Lorin is a spoken-word poet, teaching artist and feminist who co-founded the Enough Said poetry slam and is published in Going Down Swinging’s audio anthology. Lorin has toured the USA poetry slam circuit, featured at the Women of the World Poetry Slam in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and self-published an EP titled Poems.
Mariam Hussein
Mariam studied Linguistics and English at the University of Sydney. She is currently pursuing a career in journalism with an interest in politics and social issues.
Shirley Le
Shirley is a writer at SWEATSHOP who has a Media degree from Macquarie University. She has previously worked in radio, producing and presenting youth shows for SBS Vietnamese. Shirley also curated TEDxYouth events before pursuing writing full time. She was the winner of Zine West 2014 and has presented her writing at Parramatta Artist Studios and Wollongong Writers’ Festival.
Julia-Rose Lewis
Julia-Rose is an MFA graduate of NIDA with over ten years experience mentoring and teaching young people. She received the 2014 Philip Parsons award and fellowship for her first full-length play, Samson, which debuted in a Belvoir St/La Boite co-production in 2015. Julia’s work for young people includes Between the Clouds, which premiered at HotHouse Theatre in November 2015 then toured to ATYP later that year and Riley Valentine and the Occupation of Fort Svalbard, which premiered at the Queensland Theatre Company in 2016. She has been mentored by Lally Katz and Tim Roseman, has been a playwright in residence at La Boite Theatre, and is currently working on a new play commission for Belvoir St entitled Questa Casa.
Nicky Minus
Nicky is a cartoonist whose work uses humour and autobiography to explore issues relating to gender, sexuality and politics. Her work has appeared in The Lifted Brow, Overland and Resist Comics (an anthology put out by Francoise Mouly). She also recently exhibited her work in Belfast, Northern Ireland.
Heidi Pett
Heidi is a journalist and radio producer, currently for ABC’s RN Breakfast and Australian Story. Her reporting, stories and documentaries have appeared on Background Briefing, AM, PM and The World Today, and triple j’s Hack. Previously Heidi was executive producer of All The Best and the presenter and executive producer of FBi Radio’s Backchat.
Erin Riley
Erin is a writer and journalist from Sydney, Australia. Her writing focuses on gender, sport and society. Erin’s work has been featured in the Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, SBS online, ABC’s The Drum, The Guardian and more.
Lane Sainty
Lane is a journalist at BuzzFeed Australia covering LGBT issues and politics. She was previously an editor of the University of Sydney’s student newspaper, Honi Soit.
